


In Oculus Mentis

by adrenalin211



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 03:00:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adrenalin211/pseuds/adrenalin211
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After conversations that jolted her off her axis of controlled calm, she’d put her hand on her stomach and shut her eyes. She’d allow herself to feel Mulder’s absence, because she knew that feeling would feed her persistent drive to find him, to get answers to the endless list of queries that lived, constantly awake and invasive, inside of her body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: When blackness was a virtue

**Author's Note:**

> This fic depicts an alternate version of what might have happened surrounding _Requiem_. The prologue is set before the episode, whereas the rest of the fic follows it. This was written in an attempt to emulate the tone of the show, so there are various POVs as well as the inclusion of many of the mytharc characters. Creative liberties were taken with technology, geographical locations and topography. Characters are not my own. 
> 
> Warnings: Spoilers through season 7, sex, violence, contrived conspiracy theory that's not friendly to the U.S. government.
> 
> The chapter titles are (lamentably) not my own words, but have been taken from song lyrics, poems, books, etc. Credit belongs to (in the order of the chapters): Bob Dylan, Li Po, Eastmountainsouth, Plato, Al Gore, Mumford & Sons, e.e. cummings, Lisa Hannigan, Ray Bradbury, and Don Williams. To anyone reading, I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Thanks to leigh57 for all the editing and moral support. Couldn't have done it without you.

[ ](http://s1179.photobucket.com/albums/x396/adrenalin211/?action=view&current=_thb_Screenshot127-tile2.jpg)

**Prologue: When blackness was a virtue**

Sweat trickled from his brow down the side of his face, his heart nearly as audible as the clamor of his steps. His breathing accelerated, now coming in short, panicked huffs. He sucked in the damp, musty smell of the Pentagon’s basement and blinked, fast and repeatedly, urging his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

 _Something is in this room_ , he thought. Something that warranted eight security guards and a level of clearance he’d only heard about in quiet whisperings and rumors. The guards weren’t particularly hard to outsmart; he’d seen an opportunity and gone for it wholeheartedly, swiping a keycard pretty smoothly, if he did say so himself. But he knew, for a reason he was yet to discover, that being caught in this room was as good as a death sentence. 

Still, with the quest to reveal a truth propelling every pointed movement, he had to find out.

Catching his breath, Mulder scanned the room from left to right, trying to spot anything unusual. File cabinets lined the perimeter. A light shone through a window near the ceiling, causing flecks of dust to make themselves known in the relative dark of this cellar. Computers seemingly from 1989 were stacked to the side and, for all intents and purposes, this area appeared to be the basement of a government building.

He would know.

He walked a little further where rows of book shelves were paralleled, like a library. He saw a few books, but the metal shelving units stored mostly bunsen burners, Erlenmeyer flasks and other kinds of sciencey things Scully liked to use. Some tubes were empty, but some contained a translucent green substance. Jars were lined up, open, big orange buckets on the shelves below them.

 _Radioactive_ , they said, Skull and cross-bones. In case you didn’t speak English.

Mulder took a deep breath and began to walk towards the green flasks when he heard the distinct and hurried thud of footsteps in the stairwell – the one leading to the long narrow hallway he ran down just a minute ago. Someone was coming.

He didn’t have much time. His eyes took in the entire room quickly. 

To the left of the back exit, his only hope of escape, there was a lab table and chair, blueprints laid out on top. He ran towards them, his stomach nearly in his throat. 

( _When I panic, I make this face,_ he’d told Scully once.)

No, not blue-prints, he realized when he reached the table. _Maps._ Bellefleur, Oregon, one said. Longitude, latitude, elevation. Trees drawn to scale. A compass without a needle was pictured to the right of the image. His palms were clammy with fear as he shoved the map to the side, revealing a sketch. The building plans for what appeared to be an ovular aircraft, mathematically outlining some kind of plotted evolution from plane to saucer, miraculously hovering, wingless, in the design. 

A final product. 

Mulder heard the distant footsteps reach the hallway, the echo of heels moving across a cement floor reverberating throughout the room. 

He swallowed, turning his head back to the drawings. Under everything was a manila envelope. The label read: _Oculus Mentis._ He memorized the site of it, the texture and weight of the folder in his hands as he leafed through a list of familiar names and dates. Billy Miles. Theresa Hoese. 

Drawn on the back cover was a cerebrum, wires attached to the frontal lobe. Mulder exhaled through a quivered upper lip, realizing then that he’d been holding his breath to monitor the approaching sound. Very close.

He had but seconds to find something more solid and he knew it. Fueled by adrenaline and a raging anger within, he noticed a bin full of cartridges. What looked like miniature floppy disks. Hundreds of them. 

The footsteps in the hall came to a halt as they reached their destination. 

The door to the basement was pushed open in a rush just as Mulder closed the materials, slid one of the chips up the cuff of his suit, and slipped out the back exit, running quietly up the side-stairwell which led directly outside. But not before he’d seen (and looked directly at) the glaring lens of a surveillance camera pointed directly at the lab table where he knew he’d never be able to return. 

_Shit,_ he thought as he reached the street and was blinded by the sun. A headache pushed its way into his consciousness, his hands suddenly shaking as they hailed a cab.

“Drive!” was all he could say. 

_Oculus Mentis_. He said the name to himself, locking it away in his memory.

Mind’s Eye, he translated, working the few bits of Latin he’d retained from his studies at Oxford. 

Snapshots of what he’d seen floated through his mind as he tried to keep them viable in his memory. The names, the drawings, and coordinates. Numbers and letters haphazardly scattered in his brain, both fragmenting and congealing incoherently. He remembered the small camera lens with the red light on in the distance, recording his discovery.

Oculus Mentis, he whispered, not loudly enough for the driver to hear. 

_Latin for I’m screwed._

He shook the sleeve of his jacket until the tiny disk fell into his lap. Rubbing it between the pads of his fingers before shoving it into his deep pockets, he tried to gain control of his breathing. 

Once he composed himself, he would tell the cabbie his address. He would go home, aim for a calm and strategic demeanor, and write down everything he could remember. He wasn’t sure what he had his hands on, wasn’t sure what he knew. The only thing of which he was certain was that for someone somewhere who had a recording of his panicked visage, it would fall into the category of ‘too much’, so he’d have to control every compulsion, every instinct inside of him, to not share the information with Scully. 

He had to find a way to keep this knowledge alive, quite certain he wouldn’t be able to ensure the same fate for himself.

++++++++++++++++++++

Strughold came rushing through the doors of the Building Garage, out of breath and panicked, his aging body protesting against such exertion. He caught his balance and stumbled toward the cloud of cigarette smoke, knowing who he’d find there observing the construction process.

“Mulder knows,” Strughold said, breathing between the two syllables. He became increasingly conscious of his tie around his neck as he exhaled. 

His boss appeared calm, though terminally ill, breathing in a near-exhausted cigarette through an airway in his neck. Strughold had to look away. Every time. 

“Mulder?” the boss said, chuckling as he wheezed. “What does he know?” His words came out slow and divided, time and space surrounding each syllable. 

Strughold rushed to get out the words. “The security camera in the basement. There’s a recording. His face… he… He saw our plan.” 

His boss’ face grew pale, but he maintained an expression of relaxed condescension as he blew out a cloud of grey smoke through his nostrils. He paused, sucking in air. “Did he take anything?”

“Nothing. He ran out the back.” 

The boss wheezed. “Add him to the list.” 

Sweat dripped down the side of Strughold’s face. “How?”

“‘ _How’_? Just add him to the list.” 

“He’s not going to fall for it like the others. Not after he’s seen –”

“What do –” his boss interrupted, needing to take a coughing break before continuing. Strughold dared not speak. “What do you know about magic?” 

He swallowed, giving himself much needed distraction by looking at the shiny spokes on the boss’ wheelchair. “Magic?” he whispered. _There was no such thing._

“Magic,” the boss repeated. “Is nothing more than what the mind invents when the eyes are distracted.” 

Strughold took a moment to let that one sink in while the boss suffered a prolonged wheeze. 

“You’re saying--”

“If we show Mulder what he wants to see,” the boss said, cocking his head to the left and using all of his energy to tap the cigarette out against the arm of his chair. “What he thinks he’s looking for…” The boss took a final deep breath. “…Then he’s as susceptible to deception as the others.” 

“How will we get him there?” 

“I’ll take care of that, Conrad.” Strughold shivered. The sound of his boss using his first name always had the effect of exacerbating the fear within him. He dragged out the single syllable in a fashion that reminded him of death. “Just finalize the design.” 

Strughold blinked, his heartbeat nervously stammering. “And what about the risk we’ve discussed?” he said, braving up and meeting the boss’ eyes. “Turning Mulder’s quest into a crusade?” 

The boss laughed, probably as best as he could manage, motioning to the pack of Morleys on the nearby desk. Strughold lit one and handed it to the dying man before him. 

The boss was still coming out of his chuckle when he said, “We’re not going to _kill_ him, Conrad.” Another puff through his larynx, the smoke coming out like fog on a stormy morning. 

Just as Strughold was about to walk away, he heard the cracked voice of his boss, muttering a few final words before turning his chair around. “There will be plenty of time for that later.”


	2. Bitter between them flies my sorrow

[ ](http://s1179.photobucket.com/albums/x396/adrenalin211/?action=view&current=_thb_Screenshot127-tile2.jpg)

**Chapter 2: Bitter between them flies my sorrow**

A cloud of haze danced behind her eyelids and she opened them to a distorted blur of light and muted color. She blinked a few times, but her surroundings remained blurry.

“ _Mulder_ ,” she whispered, remembering only the sheer force of her concern just before things had gone black. “Mulder,” she said (louder) when no one answered. Bits and pieces of information floated around in her head, becoming clearer each second. 

Oh, _God._ Oregon. The woods.

The only noise in the room was the beeping of the monitor beside her and the short huff of her breaths as she became more lucid. The room smelled of hand sanitizer and citrus cleaning products. Like hospital. Her chest ached with disquieting realization as more surroundings became apparent. 

She was alone. 

_(‘Mulder thinks that it's me that's in danger of being taken,’_ she’d told them what felt like only moments ago.

 _’When it’s Mulder who’s in danger_.’ She heard Frohike’s voice echoing the worry that was coursing through her soul.) 

Scully saw the IV drip stuck in her arm and was about to pull it out when she noticed the call button that rested in her right hand. She pressed it, praying for someone who could tell her something to arrive quickly. Her head pulsed, a targeted throbbing around her occipital lobe. She pressed two fingers into the back of her neck and shut her eyes, trying to concentrate on her breathing. On not making any assumptions.

“Ms. Scully,” a voice said from the doorway to her room. She opened her eyelids and saw a nurse standing there. “You’re awake.”

She wanted to ask a million questions all at once. How long was I out? What’s wrong with me? Is my partner here? (Tall man. Handsome. Anywhere? At the cafeteria? Stepped out for a second?)

But a dejected feeling traveled through her sternum, a lump rising in her throat because she knew the answer (he’d never leave), so instead she said, trying for calm but barely managing more than a whisper, “I need to use a phone.” 

“You have visitors here to see you,” the nurse said.

“Who?” she asked, not allowing herself the hope she desperately wanted to feel.

“Three men. Sort of odd looking. One of them has long blond hair.” 

Scully nodded. 

No need for a phone call, she thought. They’d know. 

“Send them in.”

A minute hadn’t passed when she saw Byers alone in the doorway, a somber expression on his face. His lips turned upwards, as though he couldn’t quite figure out the right look to have.

“Did you warn Mulder?” she said quickly, in place of a greeting. She realized when the words came out of her mouth that she still didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious. 

“We tried,” Byers whispered through a vibration in his voice and a twitching of his bearded chin. 

“And?” Her voice was still quieter than she intended. 

Byers looked around the room, everywhere but at her face. “I’ve been elected to be the one to tell you.” He fiddled with the cuffs of his suit jacket, obviously nervous. Scully wanted to scream at him to get to the point. 

“Tell me what?” she whispered instead.

“We didn’t reach him in time,” Byers said. “Mulder was taken.” He dared to make eye contact with her then and she could see everything on his face. The despondence and fatigue written in the chaotic positioning of his facial muscles. 

“Taken?” A tear rolled down her cheek. Her voice sounded as though she were under water. 

“Abducted,” Byers clarified.

“How?” Her lips quivered, splitting the single syllable in half. 

“Skinner is on his way,” Byers said, taking a deep breath as though he was relieved to have let the most challenging of words escape his mouth. “We’ll know a lot more when we get to talk to him.” 

“He saw it happen?” 

“Yes.” 

Like earlier, she had so many questions she could ask, but the one she’d had answered captured every ounce of her focus. She shut her eyes, her wet cheeks physical evidence of the dark emptiness she felt within. She listened to Byers’ footsteps as he left the room, shutting the door behind him. When she heard the latch settle into its respective groove, she wept and filled the quiet. 

++++++++++++++++++++

Lights flashed before him as loud mechanical noises whooshed throughout the aircraft. He felt lifted--that eerie paradoxical sense of being in motion while staying perfectly still. 

Voices rumbled around him, gasping as the ship accelerated into the sky.

Then there was full darkness, the ship’s interior and exterior lights concealed in the night. He’d been drawn – no, lured – to that very illumination when he’d walked here, (curiosity and the hazy pull of what felt like horizontal gravity. Magnetic, but stronger than that), and in his inability to see, he began to open his other senses to the climate surrounding him. 

People whispering “Again?” and, “No, this is different.”

“I feel dizzy.” 

The pungent smell of sticky sweat and burning gas. 

The sensation of descending, fast, like a roller coaster slowly reaching its apex before charging downward, rumble of screams and flailing hands filling the space. He heard a thud when it hit the ground and the doors opened. A quiet fog came over him, like pain medicine, the heavy stuff. With each breath he took it grew harder to concentrate.

This wasn’t space at all, he thought, as the passengers were guided out and exposed to the autumn-like chill of earth clean breeze. There were trees swaying as he opened his eyes to the outside and drifted further into a state of oblivion. 

Before the haze fully set in, a memory flickered in his head. The plans he’d seen. The names of the people surrounding him. Of former abductees he’d investigated. 

_I wasn’t supposed to be here._

He had allowed his curiosity lead him towards lies, endangering her in the misguided process. 

_How do I tell Scully?_

Seconds later, self-admonishment faded away as his mind went blank and his world went black. 

++++++++++++++++++++

She’d spent the last few hours in anxious agitation. A heightened combination of restlessness and fatigue both supplied her and depleted her of the energy to do anything besides await the results of her blood-work. 

She was cold. 

She imagined Mulder’s arm wrapped around her torso and closed her eyes to allow the sensation of him to envelop her. She could almost feel the comfort of his chest against her back as the memory of his words vibrated through unsuspecting nerves in her body. 

_“It’s not worth it, Scully,” he’d whispered._

The doctor’s soft knock on her hospital door freed her from the bittersweet cocoon of recollection. 

“Dana Scully?” he asked, as though her name weren’t prominent and legible on the chart he was carrying. 

She folded her hands across her lap and corrected her posture in the stiff hospital bed. Her sheets moved with her as she waited for him continue. 

“I have your blood tests back,” he said as he moved into the room and came to her bedside. “How long have you been feeling dizzy?” 

“A few days.” She cleared her throat and reached over for the water on the tray beside her, expecting the doctor to tell her she had low blood sugar. Or that she was anemic. That she needed to not forget meals, as she’d been prone to doing lately. 

“That sounds about right,” he said instead. 

“Doctor Malley?” She felt a sudden internal crash of nervousness. 

“The blood tests show that you’re pregnant,” he said cheerfully. “I’d say about four weeks. Maybe five.” 

Scully inhaled. Her eyes circled the room as though acting without her mind’s permission, as though they’d discover Mulder in the shadows or behind the curtain and uncover the solace and reassurance of his imagined expression. An aura of something mystical danced over her as she tried to absorb what she was being told. Then, the weight of disbelief sunk heavily on her chest. She was hardly able to breathe, let alone respond. 

“Is this unexpected?” the doctor asked when she hadn’t said anything.

“Yes.” 

When she regained her composure she asked to see the charts. Her hands shook as she flipped to the page that displayed her blood work. She skimmed a finger down the list of results. Low levels of iron. Slight anemia. White count good. 

hCG levels detectable in both blood and urine. 

431 mL. 

Conclusive.

Pregnant. 

She found her breath moments later and became increasingly aware of how the doctor perceived her reaction. She didn’t care. 

She thought of the fertility experts.

Of the failed insemination attempts. 

Of Mulder above her in his bed, his tongue circling her earlobe and her trembling fingers winding around his forearm. _“Do you believe this is happening, Scully?”_

Could it be?

When the doctor finally left the room she placed the palm of her hand on her abdomen. The composed comfort of Mulder’s voice flooded her mind. 

_Never give up on a miracle._

++++++++++++++++++++

You placed your Morley’s aside and peered through the window of the experimentation room. 

You had to hand it to Mulder; he’d resisted until the final moment, his eyes the last part of him to surrender to sedation. Through almost all of Mulder’s delirium, his appendages had flailed around as though separate from his body, and seconds before being forcefully strapped down to a chair that seemed impossibly futuristic -- even to someone like you who had seen it all-- Mulder had muttered her name. Again and again. 

_Scully._

You snickered as you released a puff of smoke into the darkness. Though, if you were being honest with yourself, you would have to say that Mulder’s enthusiasm for life and quest for truth were all too often a painful reminder. It gave you pause to remember what that had been like. The attractive ignorance of your youth, before you’d learned far more than you’d ever asked to know.

Shame, Mulder would never know enough to thank you for this someday. 

Shame, that you wouldn’t be alive anyway. To see the truth extinguished from the memories of those who had dared cross its path. 

Until a couple weeks ago, Mulder hadn’t seen anything you hadn’t strategically planned for him to see. You’d spent countless hours and days and _years_ mapping out the separate steps of a pursuit leading purposefully to nowhere. 

You adjusted your wheelchair and moved it closer to the window to block out the glare of the light behind you. You could see Mulder more clearly now and could make out the stillness of his drugged body, the definitive profile of his nose and jaw as electrodes were being attached to his forehead. 

A knock on the door caused you to blink, though you made sure not to appear startled to the person before you. You wheezed instead, unable to get adequate air into your lungs.

The intern seemed discombobulated and dazed. “Sir, we’re, uh. We’re experiencing some… complications,” he garbled, not looking you in the eye. 

Pathetic, you thought. 

“Complications?” you said as you tapped your finger against the arm of your wheelchair. “Who is causing trouble?”

It felt terrible, the way you could barely get a sentence out without stopping for air. 

“Not the subjects, Sir,” the intern said, daring to look at you now, presumably getting used to the decrepit image of your body as you lit another cigarette and raised it to your larynx. “Complications with the technology,” he clarified. 

You closed your eyes to the rookie mistake, the way the intern was seemingly riled over initial hurdles and difficulties. “Of what sort?” you said calmly. “Are the machines not accessing the memories?” 

The intern exhaled, raising a hand to his head in outward frustration. “Brain activity, the memory, they’re accessing everything.” 

“Then…you can’t obliterate them?”

“No, we can sir. The delete mechanism is functioning.” 

“So, what’s the problem?” You were getting frustrated now. Annoyed, even.

“We can’t pinpoint them, Sir.” 

“You can’t pinpoint the problems?” you asked, trying very hard to avoid it, but allowing anger to slip ever so slightly into your voice. 

“We can’t pinpoint the _memories,_ ” he corrected. “Of and relating to the sightings,” he added. “The ones you’ve ordered extinguished.”

You shut your eyes then, letting the weight of his words sink in and permeate your withering mind. 

You imagined something like this might happen, having thought that the technology to see inside a person’s mind with high-definition clarity was simply too good to be true. In your mind, you’d likened it to having a video recording of the entirety of someone’s life and realizing, amidst plans to manipulate only a small portion of their acquired knowledge, that you’d been left without a DVD menu. 

“Well, we’ll have our work cut out for us then, won’t we, Michael?” you said, nonplussed by this development. You had the patience and disposition to see this through, after all.

The intern looked at you exasperatedly, the overwhelmed expression appearing on his face for a mere moment before he muttered, resolutely, “Yes, Sir,” and walked out the door.

The thing about extraterrestrial technology was, once stolen, you were on your own to work through the glitches. 

You rotated your chair to peer through the Plexiglas window. 

“Okay, Mulder,” you whispered into the empty room, rubbing the chill out of your arms. “What else will we find inside that conspiracy-ridden mind of yours?” 

This could actually be edifying, you thought. A man could gain great insight from such an endeavor. 

++++++++++++++++++++

_He was in a large chair, his wrists and ankles tied to its arms and legs with brown leather straps. His eyes were closed, but she could see them moving underneath his eyelids, about to arouse to this horrific reality._

_She was right in front of him, watching, but she was powerless to activate the kinetic energy her mind demanded. She told her legs to move, but they remained still. She felt herself twist and jerk around, trying to reach out to touch him, tell him to stay asleep. Was she strapped down too? She couldn’t tell. A wave of dizzy fatigue floated over her._

_There were men. Men with safety goggles and white coats. Men who had just finished shaving his head and who were now strapping something to his temples. Thin white wires appeared in a tangled mess around his chair. She blinked to clear the fogginess of her vision. On one end, the wires attached to the gel-like strips they were placing on his head, on the other, to a voltage meter and what seemed to be a television screen or a medical monitor of a type she’d never seen._

_The display flickered with primary colors, strips of them moving horizontally across the glass._

_He looked towards her and blinked, a degree of surprise and fear registering on his face all at once when he saw her face._

_“Scully,’ he whispered. She heard him, but no one saw her there. No one turned to look. “Scully, GO,” he urged, the last word forceful and broken, the consonant rolling off his tongue, a guttural G lingering before the vowel that followed._

_She felt wetness drowning her eyes and her heart beating rapidly, internal thunder booming._

_One of the men put his latex-covered hand over Mulder’s mouth, muffling a scream as another man turned on a yellow switch and the monitor sprang to life._

_Mulder squeezed his eyelids together. His screams echoed in her head, the sound of a piercing ring blazed in the background._

Her eyes flew open and she sat upright, fully clothed and surrounded in reports from the night of Mulder’s disappearance. Her forehead was clammy, her work garments sticking to her body where they touched her skin. It took a moment to realize what had startled her out of her nightmare. 

The phone at her bedside seemed to crescendo in volume the longer the ring persisted, though she knew it to be a figment of her imagination. She shook her head to rid herself of confusion and reached over to silence the riling bell. 

“Scully,” she said into the receiver, breathless. 

“Agent Scully, are you okay?” 

She shut her eyes, trying to suppress the annoyance the voice on the other end of the phone had the tendency to activate. Agent John Doggett was closed-minded and bull-headed. She’d only met him a few days ago, but he seemed determined to search for Mulder in all the wrong places.

“I’m fine,” she muttered through a sigh. She steadied her voice and sat further up in her bed, pushing away the papers that were gathered around her. “What is it?”

“How well did you know Agent Mulder?” he said. Probably it was another trick of her recently active imagination, but the tone in his voice sounded accusatory. 

“Very well.” That was all the answer she allowed him. “Why do you ask?”

“I’ve been lookin’ into Mulder’s recent transactions and some things don’t add up,” he said. God, the way he talked sometimes reminded her of Columbo, but again, she needed to calm down and cease making clichéd comparisons about a man she, to be honest, knew very little.

“What did you find?” she managed, controlling the tempo and volume of her voice. 

“Agent Mulder hasn’t used his home phone in two and a half weeks. No phone records to be found. Don’t you think that’s a little suspicious?” he asked, matter-of-factly. 

“We’ve been busy on cases. He’s been at work…” Scully said, trailing off. She quickly gave up. She didn’t know why she felt the need to defend Mulder to Agent Doggett. Why she felt the overwhelming urge to make Mulder so credible all of a sudden after she’d spent the past seven years challenging his beliefs. 

“Agent Scully, I pulled some receipts out of the glove compartment of his vehicle. There’s a restaurant receipt. From a diner north of here. Did you know he went to Rhode Island last weekend?” 

Scully shut her eyes. Having just woken up from her nightmare, it was hard for her to process all of this information at once. “Where in Rhode Island?”

“I can’t pronounce it. Somethin’ Native American.” 

“Quonochontaug,” Scully muttered.

“Yeah!” he said, like he was onto something. “Any idea what he’d be doin’ there?” 

“His family has a beach house there. He went there in the summer during his childhood.”

“And you have no idea why he went there last week, all unplanned like that? Without tellin’ you?”

“No.” 

There was silence on the other end for a moment. Scully refused to elaborate. 

“Long way to drive for a burger and a milkshake,” Doggett said. “Maybe you didn’t know Agent Mulder as well as you thought.” When Scully didn’t respond, he added, “Well I’m gonna look into that. Just wanted to know if you had any insight.”

“You do that, Agent Doggett,” she said curtly, unable to hang up the phone fast enough. 

She swallowed the feel of his words, of his use of the past-tense to refer to her relationship with Mulder. Over the past few days she’d grown accustomed to a pattern. After conversations that jolted her off her axis of controlled calm, she’d put her hand on her stomach and shut her eyes. She’d allow herself to feel Mulder’s absence, because she knew that feeling would feed her persistent drive to find him, to get answers to the endless list of queries that lived, constantly awake and invasive, inside of her body. 

Then, she’d allow herself to feel his presence, both in the form of memory and in the tangibility of the life growing inside of her. 

This time, when she shut her eyes, she imagined him rubbing the chill out of her bones. His arm was wrapped around her torso and his hand lingering over her stomach, where she placed her own now. 

When she was quiet enough, she could hear his voice bring life to her memory, his breath a warm wind against her cheek. 

_Maybe what they say is true, but for all the wrong reasons. It's the personal costs that are too high._

The rain slapped against her closed window, loud bursts of water on glass. She listened and shut her eyes, lying back down in bed, on top of the paperwork. He was with her now. 

_There’s so much more you need to do with your life. There's so much more than this. There has to be an end, Scully._

In that moment, back in the cabin with him wrapped around her like the very definition of comfort, she’d thought, how can there be anything more than this? 

She’d wondered, fleetingly, about how uncharacteristic he’d sounded, how unusually precautionary his protection was.

How odd it was to hear him so adamantly opposed to having her by his side, after countless occasions of his insistence that she join him on almost any and every pursuit. 

Scully’s eyes darted open. 

Odd. It _was_ odd. As though he had precognitive abilities to see the danger ahead of them. 

Her mind went directly to the information she’d just received. Phone records coming up empty, trips to Rhode Island… 

_Scully, you have to understand that they're taking abductees. You're an abductee. I'm not going to risk... losing you._

Goddammit, Mulder.

She was on the phone dialing her work number before she could even process the digits her fingers were pressing. 

“Agent Doggett.” He picked up after only one ring.

“I think he knew something,” Scully said quickly, unable to bullshit her way around this, or spend another second processing this revelation alone. 

“Agent Scully?” he asked. “Who knew something?” 

“Agent Doggett, I owe you an apology.” Her voice was focused and firm. “I have reason to believe the events of the night in question were not as much of a surprise to Mulder as they were to me.” 

“How do you mean?” 

“I think looking into Mulder’s life might not have been as useless as I had once thought.” 

“Gee, thanks, Agent Scully. I appreciate your vote of confidence.” 

She ignored his sarcasm. “I think we should start looking at anything that might indicate he was investigating something. Computer history, credit card statements, anything in the office that seems out of place...” 

“I’ll get right on that.” He was all business now. No more smart alec questions or comments.

“I’m headed to his apartment to see what I can find there.” 

“Alright. Well, can I ask you a question?” He sounded genuine. Curious. 

“What is it?” 

“What changed your mind?” 

“Agent Doggett, you asked me how well I know agent Mulder,” she said softly, fiddling with the cord on the phone and choosing her words carefully. “I’d ask you to trust the answer I gave.”


	3. So are you to me

[ ](http://s1179.photobucket.com/albums/x396/adrenalin211/?action=view&current=_thb_Screenshot127-tile2.jpg)

**Chapter 3: So are you to me**

The behavior of the men surrounding him fit into a pattern which he was, though in a state of constant disorientation, growing accustomed to. 

After the procedures the men would whisper and inject something into his IV. Something that, after about a minute or so, would make him incapable of deciphering much before the ominous black shadow hovered above him and stole his consciousness. 

But the time between? The time between nearly made the whole thing worth it. 

He had to be alert for the middle part. They’d shoot him up with adrenaline or caffeine or something. Then the memories happened in the present, like something magical. When they flipped the switch and punctured his forehead it was as though whatever was going on in the background was but a distraction from the intensity of feeling. The pureness of the moment. 

It was as though he could reach out and feel the softness of her skin, smell the mustiness of their office as they talked, or hear the low mumble of her voice when she’d just woken up, comforting. 

Leave it to Scully to be capable of soothing him from however many miles away, strapped down and dejected, in one of the most precarious situations he’d gotten himself into. 

And so, he’d come to live for the experiments, whatever the hell it was that they were doing to him, because remembering her with that degree of clarity was all he had going, a brief taste of reminiscence when all he hungered for was freedom and justice and _her_. 

This time, when they activated the memories, his body didn’t protest. Instead, he concentrated very hard on picturing her face as the drugs set in, hoping he could wield some degree of control over the memory his brain decided to relive. 

(He needed her now.)

His body began to spasm, signaling the start of the process. The men surrounding him drew their attention to the screen before them, but he saw it all inside, felt it all, heard it all. He shut his eyes to the sensation, concentrating on tuning out his surroundings. 

\+ + + + + 

_She’s like dead weight when he carries her to his bed, out cold as though her body is readying for some human spin on hibernation._

_She smells like apples and fall, something spicy. He inhales her where her head rests against his chest before placing her down._

_He can’t help but smile, looking at her like this. It’s new. Unfamiliar._

_She’s in his bed._

_He pulls the covers up and over her chest and watches her for a few more minutes. She’s peaceful like this. Quiet. She sleeps with her mouth closed and her eyelids flicker ever-so-slightly, something he didn’t know about her until tonight. Her red hair is splayed out over her face. He resists the urge to push it aside, not wanting to disrupt her._

_He decides to take a shower, where the thought of her asleep in his bed affects him in a physical fashion, another urge he resists, respectfully, with her in the next room and all, though this strikes him as a very… unique kind of decision for him, given the reading materials she could find easily accessible in the box in his closet._

_Still._

_He wants to crawl into bed next to her, not _imagine_ doing so without her knowledge. _

_This is Scully we’re talking about._

_Scully._

_When he towels off and puts on some boxers and a tee shirt he’s settled down some, but he must be louder than he intends because, on his way to the couch, she’s rustling in bed and when he turns around to look at her she’s looking back at him, motioning for him to come in with her._

_“Scully?”_

_“Mulder,” she says, pausing, like she’s considering something, possibly her words. “Come to bed.”_

_Scully doesn’t move to either side to make room for him, so when he lays next to her, he’s flush against her body and she curls into the frame of his._

_She begins by kissing his neck. “Is this okay?” she asks, sleepily._

_Mulder swallows, his hear beat erratic and strong, sweat forming on his palms._

_This is happening._

_It’d been an unspoken inevitability between them, the unmistakable direction they’d been heading towards, neither knowing when or where it would occur in the trajectory of their story until this very moment. He’s certain she can feel his response against her stomach before he manages to form words._

_“Yes,” he answers, slipping his hand under her suit jacket, rubbing at the soft green material of her sweater as she moves her attention to his mouth._

_He traces his tongue across her lips, wet. When she opens her mouth to him she tastes vaguely like toothpaste and the tea she had to drink tonight, minty sweetness and calm. His lips linger there when she pulls away to work off his shirt, so long that she kisses him again, hard, like she’s glad he’s there but would really like to pull off his shirt now, which requires disconnection._

_Her breaths are heavy. Very un-Scully, at least in all the incarnations he’s witnessed. He likes this one a lot. She smiles against his mouth._

_He lifts his arms over his head to help her pull off his t-shirt. Her hands migrate to his chest when he’s free of the material, his to the buttons on her suit. They’re tricky to work, and his hands are all nervous and fumbly._

_“Will you help me?” he says, heavy against her neck where he’s kissing her with newfound vigor, giving up on the damn buttons. Suddenly this can’t happen fast enough. She seems to agree, humming affirmatively against his ear and masterfully working off her jacket._

_He’s got his hands up her shirt, gentle, unclasping her bra before her suit hits the floor._

_“Mulder,” she whispers while kissing him, the sound of his name rolling out of her desire-filled voice making his boxers uncomfortably taut. She breaks away from his mouth, refocusing her concentration on removing their clothing. “Let’s get these off,” she says, cupping him through the material. He sucks in a breath, as though he’s capable of out-smarting sensitivity._

_As it turns out, disrobing is difficult when you can’t bring yourself to leave each other’s lips. She figures this out before he does, of course, but when they’re naked and he’s above her, his attention now on the circle of her ear and the way he can feel the pulse of her wrist drumming out desire where her hand wraps around his forearm, he says, awestruck, “Do you believe this is happening, Scully?”_

_He lowers himself into her, biting his lip at how close he is already. This is… not like watching porn. At all._

_“Barely,” she answers, raising her hips to meet him._

_She’s closing her eyes as she moves, but he keeps his on her, the flutter of her lashes, the soft sounds that leave her mouth when he hits the right angle._

_“Mulder, I’m so close.” Her words are a low whimper._

_“Tell me how,” he says, attempting to steady his voice. He yearns to learn more about her in this arena. To watch her more. Take mental notes._

_“Just what you’re doing.”_

_He moves, maintaining pace and position, his own throbbing an afterthought until he can feel her where she’s wrapped around him, steady pulse and tightening. Her hips respond with stillness for a mere second before she presses him deep into her body and stirs with purpose, as if to draw him out in the very same movement, an endeavor at which she succeeds._

_“Scully,” he manages, and she keeps on moving, prescience in her rhythm._

_“Come inside me,” she says._

_He does, unsure what indicators he’s given, though he must have given plenty as he revels in steady beat and throbbing inside of her, the way her face is rouge and he can see a few scattered freckles in the lighting of his bedroom._

_Reveling in knowing Scully in this way, in memorizing the curves and angles of flesh and bone, the sound and sight of her._

_The privilege to replay this moment with stunning clarity on the hardest of days._

_This is really happening._

\+ + + + + 

They shocked him out of his reverie, well, memory. Breathless and empty, it took him a while to piece together what just went down, the insight they’d gained into his psyche, the inconsideration they’d given to his privacy. 

Not that he expected differently.

Soon they would knock him out. He was, slowly but surely, catching on to this pattern. He would be comatose within minutes, so he focused on hearing the muffled conversation, on the anger and frustration infiltrating the surrounding voices. 

“What should we do now?” one said.

“We keep this up until we find what we’re looking for,” stated a deeper voice, plainly. 

Through his distorted vision he noticed a man filling a syringe with his scheduled cocktail of unconsciousness. 

“It’s working with most of the others,” noted another, perplexed.

Mulder felt a slight prick on the skin of his arm. Before shutting his eyes to the black falling dizziness, he heard the start of another conversation. 

“And what about the limit to how much of this the human body can endure?”

A heavy pause.

“We’ll cross that bridge when…” 

Mulder drifted out. 

++++++++++++++++++++

Scully sifted through the piles on Mulder’s coffee table. Bills, the sports section, rubber bands and pencils. It smelled of him here. His closet was the worst. She’d touched his shirts, running her shaking palm across the soft material, inhaling them, mascara smudging beneath her eyes. 

She’d been searching for what seemed like forever and had thus far found nothing helpful by way of the investigation. 

She’d merely learned, unshockingly, that Mulder had a proclivity towards eating Chinese food in front of the television, a tendency to drop pork-fried rice on the floor, and a vacuum cleaner that was suffering from a definite case of neglect. 

She was feeding his fish, about to head out, when her phone sounded in her pocket. 

“Scully,” she said, as she flipped it open.

“Scully, it’s Skinner.” 

She breathed a sigh of relief into the phone. There weren’t too many voices she liked hearing these days. She waited for him to continue.

“I’m here with agent Doggett, down in your office.” She could hear a hesitance in his voice, a reluctance to say something. 

“What is it?”

“I think you should get down here right away,” he said, exigency in his tone.

“What is it?” she repeated. With Mulder gone, elusive orders made her assume the worst. They would not be followed until she knew more.

“Agent Doggett found a note above the panels in the ceiling. Has your name on it. It looks like Mulder’s handwriting,” he said, softly now. “We haven’t opened it.” 

“I’m on my way,” Scully said, hanging up the phone before the full sentence had even escaped her lips, dashing out the door with an energy she couldn’t have mustered ten seconds ago. 

She shut the door behind her, barely remembering to turn the lock. 

++++++++++++++++++++

She tore open the envelope, Skinner and Doggett standing right there, before anyone had uttered a greeting.

It was, in fact, in Mulder’s handwriting. She could tell by the uneven curve of the S and the way he connected the C with the U in her name, Mulder’s unique form of half-cursive/half-print. 

She held her breath. The letter was dated a couple of weeks ago. 

_Dana,_

_If you’re reading this, (unless by some bizarre coincidence you decided to venture into the ceiling of our office on your own initiative), then my suspicions have been confirmed. What I’ve seen has put me (and us) in danger. I hope you’ll forgive me for not disclosing this information to you sooner. I know you’re looking for me. I’ll explain to the best of my abilities, to the extent of my knowledge surrounding what’s transpired._

_Last week, I followed a lead to the basement of the Pentagon, where I was captured on camera. I found the plans for what appears to be a government project called _Oculus Mentis_. Scully, there was a list of familiar names, of believers, of people who have experienced abductions and sightings. In addition, there was a plan, an architectural design of a spacecraft, all the mathematics and schematics necessary. I’m no Wright brother, but with those aerodynamics calculated the only logical conclusion I can draw is that the government is building it to fly. To fly those people on the list somewhere for experimentation, like they took you._

_I’ve taken some time to investigate anything I can on Oculus Mentis. Nothing I’ve researched has brought me any definitive answers. The most I could gather was that it was an old and failed attempt at memory annihilation. That might be why they’re taking these people._

_Scully, I’m beginning to think you’re right, about aliens, about the paranormal, about everything. If the government can build a UFO, they can manipulate sightings, abductions, instill fear. Maybe that’s all there ever was, what they wanted us to assume. My beliefs have been considerably challenged as of late. My spirit is disheartened, my life’s search potentially an act in misguided futility. It’s taken every ounce of control I possess not to share this with you and seek the solace of your voice and faith, your comfort._

_I wasn’t on their list, but I don’t know what will become of me when they realize what I’ve seen. The same could happen to you if you let on that you know anything. It could lead you towards a similar path, a similar fate. I can’t have that happen. Yours is a life I cannot persist without. You’ll fare better without me than I without you. Anything I’ve done, I assure you, has been out of protection and the confidence that this is true._

_Reseal this letter in a new envelope, forge my handwriting on the front, and leave it where it was found. If the government gains access to my memory there’s no telling whether or not they’ll discover what I’ve left for you, what I’ve told you. They can’t know for sure the threat you are to them, the speculative knowledge you now hold._

_It’s not safe here, Scully. I know you’re looking for me, but it’s not safe to follow. I urge you to desist in the search for me. This truth is greater than the two of us, greater than anything I’d ever expected to find. Go to my family’s cottage in Rhode Island and please forget what I’ve told you. Cease your search for the truth._

_I hope to see you again someday, safe and smiling._

_-Mulder_

Scully couldn’t breathe. The paper shook in her hands, his voice so alive in her head that she searched the room for him, only to find Skinner and Doggett looking at her, intrigued expressions on their faces. 

Tremor in her lip, she managed to voice what she’d been unable to say since she’d been told of his disappearance. 

“I don’t think we’ll find him,” she managed, blinking to stop a tear from sliding down her cheekbone. 

She thought about adding the final words that shook her off axis, the thought of them too sandpapery and defeatist on her tongue to add sound.

Not _alive_. 

++++++++++++++++++++

You were told of the successes happening with the project. The stories didn’t even collectively put a smile on your face. You remembered what it was like to have emotions. To feel things besides fear. 

Even fear, now, was muted, merely an instinctual last-minute effort at self-preservation. 

Every few hours an intern popped a head in, nervously, and updated you on the latest. 

You were most concerned with Mulder. You’d been waiting for his update all afternoon and when it arrived, you found yourself digging your nail into your skin as though it were all you had to hold onto. 

“How did he fare?” you asked without turning around. 

“We’re experiencing some difficulty with patient H,” a voice said, a quiver in every other word that came out of his mouth. 

(It used to feel powerful, when people were intimidated by you like this, but now it felt like nothing.)

You rotated the wheels of your chair in order to receive the message. Patient H was Mulder, of course, so your interest was sparked.

Your face exuded calmness; you were sure of this. “Why so much difficulty with Mulder?” you wondered aloud.

The intern cleared his throat, fiddling with the clipboard in his hand. “Sir, when we realized that the memories in question could not be accessed on command, we also realized something else.” 

“What’s that?” you asked, deciding to play along in the interest of time. This was the wordy intern, the one that would never just spit it out. 

“That it wouldn’t matter, for the most part, because the memories that are most apt to surface in these patients are the most prominent memories. And their most prominent memories tend to--” 

“--Be memories of their UFO encounters. Those which we wish to obliterate,” you said, cutting him off and finishing the sentence.

“Yes, sir.” He wrote something down on his clipboard. 

“And Agent Mulder’s?” you asked.

“Despite clear signs of paranoia and conspiracy theory, the major focus of his temporal lobe is memories of a woman…” He looked to the clipboard he was carrying, about to supply you with a name. 

“Agent Scully,” you stated, in no need of any affirmation to be sure of your accuracy. 

“Yes, sir,” he said, looking up again.

You shut your eyes, futile attempt at meditation. “What is the plan, in light of these developments?” you asked.

The intern looked at you as though he’d been hoping _you’d_ supply the plan. He stumbled for words for a few moments, eyes darting around the room before saying, “We’re hoping, eventually, we sift through enough that the relevant memories will surface.” 

“How long?” You’ve become increasingly concerned that your death with precede the final stages of this project. 

“We don’t know, sir.”

“And has this phenomenon trended among other patients?”

“A few. For those with new developments in their relationships, yes,” he answered, honestly. 

“You know what we’ll have to do if we can’t find and destroy the memories in question,” you said, gripping a cigarette in your hand, tight between your fingers. “Don’t you, Jason?”

(You used to enjoy memorizing the names of your staff and repeating them in a voice that usually sent visible shivers down spines. Though you experienced little to no enjoyment out of this ever since your prognosis went sour, apparently there was great truth to the saying, ‘old habits die hard’.) 

The intern swallowed, deer-like eyes meeting yours. “Yes, I do know, sir,” was all he said before politely dismissing himself.


	4. A half looking for the other half, for its corresponding symbol

[ ](http://s1179.photobucket.com/albums/x396/adrenalin211/?action=view&current=_thb_Screenshot127-tile2.jpg)

**Chapter 4: A half looking for the other half, for its corresponding symbol**

Scully tapped at the door, agent Doggett by her side. Hands shaking and heartbeat unpredictable, she hadn’t had the means with which to drive herself here and Doggett had kindly (not sarcastic) pointed this out to her when she’d mentioned where she was heading. 

_I’ll give you a ride._

They listened as Frohike unlatched eight or so locks, the final deadbolt clicking loudly before the door was pulled open.

“To what do we owe this pleasure?” he said, a light-hearted air to his question (an effort that, while appreciated, was not suitable for her mood). 

Scully stared into the room, spotting Langley and Byers in the corner and watching as Agent Doggett, wide-eyed, absorbed the full effect of his surroundings. 

“I came here to ask you what you know about Oculus Mentis,” she said, not wasting another second in preamble. She hadn’t intended on following Mulder’s wishes until exhausting all possible avenues, not before declaring all information readily available to her to be useless on her quest for clarity. 

The three of them shared a knowing glance, the glance of a trio of conspiracy theorists potentially on the brink of privileged discovery, or about to divulge something huge. Or both, perhaps.

“In Oculus Mentis,” Langley repeated dramatically. “In the mind’s eye.” He looked over at Byers and Frohike, as though seeking permission to continue. They nodded, tension in their postures. “It was speculated to be a top-secret government plan during the Nixon Administration, intended to liberate returning Vietnam soldiers from the burden of memory.” 

Byers stepped in, and Scully remembered how the three of them, together, could tell a pretty compelling story. “It didn’t work, though,” he said. “The project involved experimental and controversial technology. It was said to have had an influx of enthusiasm and support following Watergate, for those trying to afford Nixon some redemption, but it failed. The science was too advanced, the results of the trials too severe.” 

“It got swept under the radar,” Frohike chimed in. “People wanted to hide the extreme side-effects experimentation had caused.”

“To this day, its place in history hasn’t been proven. No paperwork has been found to acknowledge its existence,” Langley added, providing a conclusion to their story and what seemed to be the extent of their knowledge.

“And what do you know about this project today? Anything?” Scully asked, hopeful. 

“Why?” Frohike bounced eagerly. “What have you heard?” 

“Nothing,” Scully said, to start, sighing when, out of desperation, she decided to seek their opinion about the letter. She held up the piece of paper, which she planned to return very soon. She just needed to hold onto it a while longer. 

“Agent Mulder seems to think this project is seeing the light of day again,” she stated, careful, always, to use the present tense. “Before his disappearance,” she said, surprised at how easily those words were starting to come out of her mouth, how natural they seemed now, “he saw something that has caused him to believe there are government plans to use this technology, or perhaps a more advanced form of it, on abductees in order to extinguish all memory and, likely, enthusiasm for the search.” 

Three bodies leaned forward in intrigue, all at once, Agent Doggett’s brow furrowing as he studied them. 

“It’s all in the letter,” Doggett said when, Scully assumed, it became obvious the news had stunned them into silence. On the ride over he seemed skeptical, of course, reluctant to believe anything in the letter, but he’d jumped on the promise of a new lead to follow, something more substantial than implausible crumbs on a trail leading nowhere. 

Frohike took a glass of water into his shaking hand and, with seemingly great difficulty, managed to swallow a few sips of water before moving his awestruck gaze to the letter in Scully’s hand, looking up at her, and saying, “May I see?” as though he were honoring a paper that held the handwritten words of God himself.

And Scully could understand because she was, too, and she offered over the letter only with great reluctance. “Careful,” she said. “I have to return it.” She swallowed at the emotion the writing contained, intimate thoughts of Mulder’s to which Frohike would now be privy. It was a disquieting price to pay in order to gain the insight she came here seeking. 

Frohike gently took the letter and began reading it in the corner of the room. After a moment, Byers cleared his throat and filled the tension with conversation. 

“We’ve actually been trying to call you, Agent Scully,” he said. She managed to take her eyes off the letter and focus on the man presently talking to her. 

“I haven’t been at my place much,” she said, quiet, by way of explanation, the vision of Mulder’s empty apartment pervading her mind.

Byers paused, nodding his understanding. “We ran the Oregon location you provided us through the system.”

“Oh?” Scully asked, leading. She’d been meaning to ask about this, but it’d been set on the back burner in light of new evidence. 

“The radar shows no sign of anything spooky that night,” Langley chimed in. “Nothing out of the ordinary.” 

“Anything flying, anything in the air that was remotely around those latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates that night was all government issued and certified,” Byers added. 

Langley sighed, his body folding and crumbling in failure. “Sorry we couldn’t help,” he said. 

“That might actually be more helpful than you think,” Scully said bleakly, looking at Agent Doggett. “That would align with Mulder’s story. It would account for what Skinner saw. That whatever was in the air that night was extraterrestrial only in appearance.” 

Doggett squinted as he considered this. The skeptic in him appeared grateful for a break in this case that didn’t involve aliens. Though he was patriotic, she imagined that agent Doggett would more quickly sign onto the idea of government lies versus otherworldly life.

He nodded at her as she noticed Frohike, who was finishing the letter and mumbling something to Langley, pointing at a line Mulder had written.

“Is something wrong?” Scully asked, a little too loudly. Frohike looked up at her, his eyes lowering guiltily behind his glasses. “What?” she asked. 

Frohike took a deep breath. “I can’t imagine why he’d tell you all of this and then ask you to forget it,” he stated. “‘Cease your search for the truth?’” he quoted skeptically. “Doesn’t’ sound like Mulder to me.” 

“You’re saying Mulder didn’t write the letter?” she asked, her voice tense and defensive now. She knew he did. She knew _him_. 

“No,” Frohike said casually. “No, he definitely wrote it.” He squinted at the lines on the paper, as though by doing so he could read between them. He looked at her, apologetic. “I’m just wondering _why_.”

As Scully calmed down she heard the question behind his confusion before Frohike needed to spell it out. He’d realized something she would have herself, had it not been the fact she’d been overcome by emotion and unable to stand up straight, let alone decipher anything about the letter beyond the wonder of reading the physicality of his words, the sight of his handwriting, familiar, on paper. 

What Frohike didn’t understand was Mulder’s reason for providing this intel when, by Mulder’s own admission, the knowledge was dangerous and something about which, according to the letter, she was to do nothing. 

Now that this had been brought to her attention, in fact, she couldn’t understand it either. 

Langley placed his finger on the bottom of the page, glancing over Frohike’s shoulder. “Unless…” he started. 

She finished the sentence in her head, realizing Mulder’s true intent in leaving this information. 

A trail to follow, should she wish to follow it.

She took faith again, taken aback by the solidity of Mulder’s conviction that, though he warned her of the dangers ahead, regardless of his concerns, she could never be convinced to cease looking when it was Mulder for whom she searched. 

A warmth spread within, the knowledge that, though so many words went unspoken between them, he’d trusted in the absolute truth of her need to find him. 

Agent Doggett’s voice sprung her away from her thoughts and, when she took in his expression, he appeared to be aware of the fact that everyone in the room was arriving at a conclusion he had yet to draw. He looked to Langley. “You’re sayin’ what Mulder means by ‘stop lookin’ is, ‘It’ll be dangerous, but here are some leads!’?” 

Doggett looked utterly confused by this. Who could blame him, really?

Frohike smiled, walking past Doggett and patting him on the back, energy and a bit of condescension slipping into his tone. “Now you’re catching on!” he said, pulling back when Doggett shrugged away from his touch. “He knows we’re gonna look anyway, Secret Agent Man,” Frohike added. “Might as well start out as informed as possible.” 

Doggett nodded, still not convinced but not looking opposed to the idea either.

Frohike placed the letter back in Scully’s hand and she accepted it, rereading it in search of anything that might make more sense now. 

“Where do we start?” Langley wondered, interrupting her thought process. 

“This house in Rhode Island,” she started, feeling certain she was onto something, though she wasn’t sure what. “Agent Doggett said Mulder was there recently. Right before he disappeared,” she told the others, looking for affirmation from Doggett who was nodding at her with newfound enthusiasm. 

“Yeah, last weekend,” he repeated to her as the others absorbed the new information. 

“That house,” Scully added. “It has a history of…” She was unsure of how to finish the sentence. “…of being a hiding place,” she finished. 

“For you?” Frohike asked, referring to Mulder’s request that she stay there for protection. 

She shrugged off the question, too distracted by the thoughts currently consuming her mind. “When Mulder’s mother was sick, she directed him to this house, to find something she’d hidden there.” 

Everyone looked at her with undivided attention. 

She took a deep breath, trying to figure out what she herself was suggesting by assuming there was significance to this history. 

“Only,” she started, looking at the letter more carefully now. “She had suffered a stroke. Her brain was jumbling things. Her directions ended up being a cryptogram of sorts. Mulder had to rearrange the letters to make sense of them.” 

Byers looked at the letter, then at Scully. “Do you think there’s a message hidden in there?” 

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think he wants me to go to that house to find more than just protection, especially if he went there just last weekend.” 

Agent Doggett was suddenly very invested, leaning forward and squinting as though an obscenely bright light bulb had just gone off. “I found a library receipt of Mulder’s today when lookin’ for any leads,” he said, now shutting his eyes like he was trying to call up a memory. “He checked out some how-to book a few weeks back on encoding or encrypting or somethin’. I didn’t think anything of it at the time,” he said, looking to Scully like he owed an apology. “The kind of man Mulder seems to be, and all.” 

Present tense, she noticed. 

He was growing on her. 

Langley looked to the letter with the same face Frohike wore earlier. “There’s _totally_ a hidden message in there!” he exclaimed; his expression could only be described as…giddy. 

She looked at the three of them, whose eyes were fixated on the letter as though it contained the secrets to some Star Wars video game, or whatever it was they were into right now. She shared a grin with agent Doggett, who seemed as amused by their palpable excitement as she was. 

“I’m gonna leave this with the three of you to figure out,” she said, which would win her goddess status, she was sure, though that was not at all what she was going for. 

“Sweet heavens,” Frohike said as she handed the letter to Byers, her stomach protesting when she released her grasp. “We’ll call you as soon as we get something.” 

Scully stood up, a lightheaded dizziness overcoming her, though this new information had inspired in her an encouragement and optimism that could not be hampered. She resisted the urge to place her hand on her stomach and, even though hunger wasn’t at all on her radar (nausea would be a better descriptor), she made a mental note to eat something as soon as she and Agent Doggett left the building. 

“It was nice meetin’ you,” Agent Doggett said as he followed her out of the unique workspace, the genuineness behind his tone indisputable. 

+++++++++++++++++++ 

The thunder had started to rumble on the way back, a cool breeze flooding through the car windows. She’d felt the storm coming before the tangible signs of it had arrived. Chill in her bones, ache in her heart. 

The feeling of being pregnant yet so empty fueled up an angry incongruity within, her body its own brewing contradiction. _There’s a storm coming,_ she’d told Agent Doggett. He’d looked at her like she was just about crazy. 

Now that she was home, branches thrashed against her windows. 

Mulder’d left a shirt at her place. Actually, he’d left two shirts here, but the maroon one she’d washed for him now smelled of Downy (linen and clean). When she’d buried her face in the smooth material, softened by laundering and excessive use, her olfactory system had failed to provoke the recollections she desired. She hadn’t realized that by doing laundry that day she was washing the _him_ out.

After she peeled off her garments from work, she donned the fading grey one he’d slept in. 

When she inhaled his scent she confirmed that this shirt still functioned at stirring up her recollections. 

_She met his gaze in the reflection of the bathroom mirror as they brushed their teeth._

_He observed her messy pony tail and makeup-free face in the shiny glass, his eyes trailing slowly down her camisole, lingering on the area where it hugged the curve of her waist._

_He bent over and spit out his toothpaste, looking at her through the mirror again._

_“I thought you invited me here for a slumber party, Scully,” he said, his expression serious. “Truth or dare, painting our toe-nails, maybe some time set aside for all the latest gossip,” he continued, his face feigning disappointment, but staring appreciatively. “You’re not dressed for these activities,” he pointed out._

_She smirked at him as she leaned forward to spit. Neither of them knew how to approach this now. Them._

_“Well,” she said, her mouth minty and her mind eerily clear. She turned around to face him, raising an eyebrow. “I had other activities planned.”_

_Her boldness was worth it to see Mulder’s face as it stilled, forgetting to blink. She walked to her bedroom, her heartbeat accelerating as she felt the weight of his footsteps following behind._

_A second later she heard him say, “If it’s a pillow-fight you’re suggesting, Scully, I should warn you…”_

_He caught up to her, his hand on her shoulder in the hallway. “I move swiftly with--”_

_“Boyish agility?” she suggested as their lips met._

_His breath was heavy as his mouth surrounded hers, a retort likely lost in his distraction._

Scully took in the memory, smiling, her hand reflexively migrating to her abdomen. _Thank you,_ she whispered into the empty space, her words muffled by a crackle of disgruntled thunder. _I needed that_. 

++++++++++++++++++++

It was around the witching hour when you received a phone call. The rushed and panicked voice of old Strughold stirred you out of your reverie. 

This had better be good, you thought. Dreaming was the only relief. 

“There’s a serious problem here,” he said, his voice a jittery display of pathetic fear. “Mulder took a microchip.” 

“What?” you said, realizing after it came out of your mouth what a stupid, startled mistake you made. 

Show no emotion, you told yourself as you sat up in bed and reached to turn the switch on your small nightstand lamp. 

“Conrad,” you said, flattening your tone, out of breath from the exertion. You felt a percussion striking through your chest. “You told me nothing was taken. I distinctly remember this conversation.” 

“The surveillance cameras didn’t catch it,” he said defensively, rushing to get the words out. “We only noticed upon counting the bin.” 

“Has he seen anything on it?” 

“Our monitors are showing that it hasn’t been opened.” 

“Access the tracking device,” you ordered, and in mid-sentence, when you let your voice display anger, your breathing became strained, wheezing. 

“We’ve tried,” he snapped in frustration. Your eyes narrowed in the darkness at his audacity. The kind of tone he only took when there was distance separating them. “The signal is weak,” he added. 

You were nonresponsive for a moment before you steadied your shaking hands, evened your breathing, and asked, “What is it telling you?” 

“We can only trace it as far as a beach town in Rhode Island,” he managed. You breathed out a sigh, hoping the relief you felt at those words could not be heard through the receiver. You allowed him to continue. “The GPS signal is too weak to tell more. We’ll have to investigate what’s in that town. Find out where Mulder might have stashed it.”

“There’s no need for _that_ ,” you said, casual and collected, dragging out the last syllable in mockery. “I know the address.” 

“You…do?” 

“Of course I do,” you managed and when you coughed out the words a startling crimson discolored your handkerchief. 

You told Strughold where to search. You told him to waste no time. You told him his life was at stake if he didn’t have someone there within the hour and the chip returned to him sometime tomorrow. 

When you fell asleep again, you dreamed: Your skin was spotted like the pictures of your lungs the doctor showed you. Hair grew out of moles, unsightly; you laid rotting on the ground. 

Fox Mulder stood above you, and when he spat on your corpse, he laughed. 

++++++++++++++++++++

“I’ll be damned,” Frohike said as it all became apparent. He couldn’t find Agent Scully’s number fast enough.

He could feel the rush of blood in his body, excitement at the thought of being involved in a live investigation, at the thought of aiding in the search for Mulder.

Langley came up behind him saying, “What?” but Frohike shushed him, swatting at the air in indication that he was on the phone.

It rang. His palms were sweating. 

Scully picked up, her voice like honey and sleepytime tea. His body tingled, feeling a spark of privilege run through him at getting to hear her in this capacity.

Mulder probably got to all the time. Lucky bastard had a way with the ladies. 

_Dammit, Frohike, focus,_ , he told himself. Mulder wasn’t the lucky one right now.

“Hello?” she said again into the receiver, annoyance now corrupting her tone. 

“Agent Scully,” he said, finding his voice. “We deciphered the code and determined Mulder’s message,” he said, too quickly. 

“What is it?” she asked.

“He said, _‘It’s in the attic,’_ ” Frohike stated, pleased with himself.

“He didn’t say what _‘it’_ is?” Scully asked. He could feel the frustration and exhaustion on the other end.

“No,” he said. “But I sure would like to know once you find it.” Frohike tapped his pencil against his desk. “Whatever _‘it’_ is.” 

“Thank you,” Scully muttered, “I’m in Rhode Island now.” Scully paused for a moment. “I appreciate how hard you worked on that.” 

“You aren’t curious about how I arrived at the answer?” Frohike just wanted to say it. It felt pretty cool to have figured it out.

“I am,” she said, probably trying to sound enthusiastic, poor thing, but what he heard penetrate her words was a whole lot of yawny disinterest. She didn’t have time for that, Frohike thought. Understandable. “Could you explain it to me later?” she continued. “I just got to the house.” 

“Sure thing,” Frohike said. “Agent Scully?” 

“Yes?” 

“Let us know what you find?” He said it like a question, to convey the kind of respect he had for that privilege, should she continue to seek their help. 

Pause. 

“I will,” she said. Then there was silence, the dead noise of the receiver after she hung up. 

“‘It’s in the attic’?” Langley asked, pulling him out of the sweet hypnotic trance of his Scully fog. Langley was squinting at Mulder’s penmanship, crossing his eyes and studying the page as though meaning could be extracted if he only approached it like he was reading a _Magic Eye_ book. “How’d you figure that?”

Frohike rolled his eyes, taking in Langley’s expression through his wire-rimmed lenses and seeing an opportunity here. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he said. 

Langley sighed, scratching his head. “What do you want?” 

Frohike thought about it. Paused. “No refried bean burritos for you for a week.” 

“A _week_?” Langley protested. 

“You heard me, Flutterbutt,” he said, delighted as he watched Langley’s conflicted expression. “And access to your subscription of _Girls Gone Geeky_ ,” he added. 

“Damn you!” he said, pausing to consider this, but still looking curiously at Mulder’s letter. “Not February’s,” he said, adamant.

“But all the other months,” Frohike insisted.

“Done,” Langley agreed, looking to the letter as if to suggest he was through bargaining. “Now out with it.” 

“He used every twenty-ninth letter,” Frohike spilled, flipping through the pages of the book Mulder’d checked out weeks ago. Byers had gotten to the library yesterday, minutes before it closed, to retrieve _A Glitch-Liker’s Guide to the Galaxy of Code Creation_ immediately after hearing Scully’s theory. 

Frohike flipped through the book, looking for the piece of paper Mulder had stuck inside without which he’d have never figured this out. 

“And then he ran them through this code.” He found Mulder’s bookmarked page again, meeting Langley’s inquisitive stare. 

“Wow,” Langley said, studying the processes. “A simple algorithm,” he noted, working the letters and doing the math in his head as Frohike had done minutes ago. “Who would have thought Mulder for a novice encoder?” 

Frohike sighed. “I think Mulder would do anything to protect the truth from the hands of those government bastards trying to conceal it.”

“Every twenty-ninth letter,” Langley wondered aloud, not expecting an answer.

“Maybe Scully knows,” Frohike suggested. 

Langley shrugged, and Frohike could tell he was searching for some comic relief when he reached for his Atari 2600 controller. “Mind if we break for a game of _Combat_?” he asked. 

“Mind if I kick your scrawny white stern?” 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Langley said, handing Frohike a joystick. “You’ll be sorry you said that.” 

“When I’m done with you?” Frohike started, situating himself comfortably, taking a sip of his Shasta, and pausing for effect, “You’ll be sorry you exist.”

++++++++++++++++++++

It wasn’t raining in Quonochontaug, Rhode Island when she pulled into the narrow driveway of Mulder’s childhood vacation home. Instead, the air smelled like marsh and ocean, clammy on her skin. She took off her jacket as she opened the rental car door. 

“In the attic,” she whispered to herself, her eyes sizing up the house and surveying the rooftop tar. She’d have to go upstairs, find the attic, and likely spend a great deal of time sifting through crap under all those old layers of shingling. 

She was about to test Mulder ring of keys when she realized, to her surprise, that the door knob was loose. She studied the lock, looking for evidence of tampering. 

She noticed scratches on the gold coating and, before she could piece this information together, she realized her pulse was hammering against her wrist, her hand still on the door.

Scully listened. 

Quiet. 

She pushed the door a little further open, the telltale squeak as the hinges protested their years of lonely abandon. 

Scully held her breath, her eyes darting around the inside suspiciously as she stepped through the doorframe. 

The place had been turned upside down. Plates were broken across the living room floor. Every drawer of every cabinet open, every sheet covering every sofa torn off in haste. She suppressed a gasp at the sight before her and continued to listen.

Was someone still in here?

Scully reached for her holster, wrapping her hand firmly around the handle of her gun, prepared to draw at any moment. 

Just as she removed her weapon, coiling her finger around the trigger, ready, she heard a screen-door slam, echoing loudly in the near empty house through what must be the kitchen. 

Scully rushed through the house to locate the source of the sound. When she looked out the back window she saw someone reach the perimeter of the forest behind the house, the leaves rustling in his wake. 

She was panting now. Her heartbeat drew in her attention like an accident you can’t look away from, hammering throughout her whole torso. Her stomach dropped. 

She tried to catch her breath as she backed her body against the wall.

If Mulder were here, she told herself, he’d chase after the man she saw, running towards him without thought of the harm that could be done, of the power the unknown man held.

_If Mulder were here…_

Scully pressed her lips together and muffled a sigh. If only it were easier to cease such conditional thinking, she’d be less tempted to finish the second end of those ever-depressing sentences. Her eyes welled, panic and grief intertwining. 

She had more to worry about, more than her own life now. She stood no chance of catching up to the perpetrator. 

She had to clear the house, verify that she was alone. 

Scully tiptoed forward. There were a few more steps through the kitchen before she would reach the banister of the stairway. She stood flat against the wall and made a quick head-bob to survey the stairs. 

Clear.

She listened, more than anything else, for creaks in the hardwood floor, the undeniable sign of another’s presence.   
She heard nothing. 

The living room and bedroom on the first floor were empty. The closets were dusty and picked through, but void of life. 

She made it back to the banister and took one stair at a time. Her gun was at her side. Though her mouth was dry, her tongue lapped around her lips before closing. Nervous habit. 

She could feel her heartbeat reverberating through her entire body as one stair creaked loudly. If anyone was still in the house, that would surly give away her whereabouts. She tightened her grip around her Sig.

 _Mulder,_ she said in her head, a prayer. _I need you now._

Scully cleared the upstairs bedrooms carefully and with relative ease, her body calming down. She stared out the window from the top floor, watching a form rustling the trees in the distance, traveling and escaping through the forest.

She was in no position to follow him, alone and unaware of the power he held, where he came from, who he worked for. She thought about calling for backup, but she couldn’t risk compromising the investigation with any sort of publicity.

She was on her own. 

She only hoped that she’d gotten here in time, that he hadn’t found that for which she came here looking. 

Not that she _knew_ what she was looking for, precisely. 

She made her way back and forth across the upstairs, staring at the ceiling in the process.

Her breathing was finally normal when, after five minutes of running on adrenaline and catching up to her fast-paced mind, a sinking feeling finally pushed its way into her consciousness.

Where the hell _was_ the attic?


	5. An Inconvenient Truth

[ ](http://s1179.photobucket.com/albums/x396/adrenalin211/?action=view&current=_thb_Screenshot127-tile2.jpg)

**Chapter 5: An Inconvenient Truth**

It occurred to Mulder, through the fog of muddled repetition, that he might be able to invoke some control over which of his memories surfaced when they turned on that machine. 

It wasn’t like the times he’d go to bed at home thinking of Neve Campbell and Denise Richards in that scene from _Wild Things_ in hopes the power of positive thinking could carry his thoughts into sleep. (He had only a few moments of alertness before they stuck him with whatever memory serum crap they were giving him, so he had to spend them thinking about important topics, as such.)

But when recollection lit up the monitors, he wasn’t unconscious. More like…hyperconscious. And right before injections, he’d concentrate all his energy on where he’d rather be: Scully’s face, her voice, the way he felt when she positioned her legs between his before slumber. 

And it worked. It was always her he saw when he shut his eyes to experimentation, and despite the fact that he was chilly and mostly naked, attached to wires, screens, IVs, and you name it, he’d find comfort in the hard chair, hearing the soft insulation of her voice, feeling the milky skin he was given the privilege to touch, and reliving each stunning moment – crystal-clear versions of instances he thought he’d only get to experience once. 

Mulder waited for someone to come stimulate his drug-induced vision, already applying all the focus he could muster to his desired topic of remembrance. 

Something was taking them longer today. They usually woke him up (needle of alertness into his veins) and got right to business. 

He had too long to think this time, and a flutter of panic ran up his spinal column as he waited for the scientists. 

Mulder tensed at the thought of traveling too far on a train of thought he’d never before been able to see through to its destination. 

The thought of Scully looking for him. 

He knew she’d be searching. Hell, he even supplied her with some hidden information, predicting full-well he couldn’t convince her out of her predictable stubbornness and selfishly hoping that the truth would not end with this project.

But he’d had an inadequate preconceived notion of the size of this truth, how serious the technology, how determined these people were to obliterate whatever it was that he saw. 

This was far more dangerous than anything they have ever done together. 

In light of what he had now seen, he wished to go back. If only he could destroy what he stole, rip up the letters to her, and instead, write her a message with words of goodbye. 

_Scully, Scully, Scully,_. He ran her name through his head when he heard the rushed steps of the men rapidly approaching. The machine hummed to life, the monitors lit up, and Mulder shut his eyes, ready as ever. 

\+ + + + +

_“I’m glad you’re here,” he says, years younger, opening the door and moving aside to let her in._

_“You told me to come here, Mulder,” she responds._

_This refreshes his memory and he nods. “Sorry. I’m a little bit startled, Scully,” he says, explaining. “The strangest thing just happened.”_

_She looks around his apartment, as though she cannot fathom anything strange happening in the confines of these walls. “What happened?” she humors._

_“Well I nearly nodded off over there in that chair,” he says, looking to where he’d been sitting. “And my window was open a crack, you see.” He points now to the window. “But my screen broke a while back.” He stares at the giant holes in the screens and, in afterthought, says, “I have to get that fixed.”_

_Scully makes a face, that cute little nose scrunch she does when he doesn’t cut to the chase fast enough and she’s not sure whether to look bored or annoyed. “You were in that chair falling asleep…” she leads, steering him back on track._

_“Well I woke up because a little bird was tapping at the glass on the window.”_

_Scully raises her eyebrow and shoots him an expression that tells him she’s trying not to laugh. “You were nearly napping, and a bird came tapping,” she starts, eyeing him. “Was it The Raven?”_

_Mulder smirks, blowing out a breath of air in the process. “It was a chickadee or something.” He looks at the laughter written on her face and tries to hold back his smile. “Scully, are you interested in hearing my story, or not?”_

_“I’m interested!” she says, insistent but chuckling, unable to stop being amused by her own joke. “Keep going, Mulder.”_

_“Well.” He stares at her, feigning annoyance. “Before I knew it, it had flown into the window!” His eyes go wide at this point and hers match his. “Through the screen, Scully. I couldn’t believe it.”_

_And he knows what she’s thinking the second the words come out of his mouth. It’s written in the edges of her smile—‘YOU had trouble believing THAT?’ He feels her thinking it. It’s uncanny, her voice in his head._

_But she doesn’t say it. Instead, she looks around his apartment again, up and down._

_Nothing is flying around; he sees her verifying this._

_“Well?” she asks. “What did you do?”_

_“It was perched on the coffee table. Its little heart was pattering so fast when it realized where it was. I felt so bad for the thing, Scully.”_

_He realizes now, how ridiculous this story sounds. Not implausible, no, but outlandish that he had such a reaction, so he decides to make it more dramatic. Not change the narrative, per se, but add some panache as he describes his mindset._

_“I tried to move slowly toward the window so as not to scare it more,” he continues. He creeps over to the glass as he explains, like it’s happening all over again. His steps remind him of Tom & Jerry, of cats who mistakenly assume they’re stealthy. _

_Scully nods. She’s getting more invested in the tale, though. That much is evident on her face._

_“I took the screen out of the window to give it some more space to fly through,” He’s staring at her now, gauging her reaction. “I could feel its fear though, Scully. Its entire little bird body was trembling. So I started to whistle.”_

_Mulder whistles, showing her how he did it. “Then I motioned for it to come. I was trying to show that the window was open. And send a friendly vibe.”_

_“A friendly vibe?” She’s trying not to laugh._

_“Right.”_

_Mulder whistles again. His hands motion like a traffic cop towards the window as though the bird is still in the apartment, needing to be directed. Scully cracks her previously straight-faced façade and smiles at him, at the way he’s whistling like an idiot._

_“You be the bird in this scenario, okay Scully?”_

_“I’m not gonna be the bird, Mulder.”_

_“All you have to do is stand there sort of shaking,” he says, not taking no for an answer._

_Mulder whistles directly at Scully now and she rolls her eyes like she doesn’t know how he reels her into such nonsense. But with his next whistle she’s half-heartedly looking afraid, trying her best to tremble._

_“How could you be certain you weren’t whistling its mating call?” she asks, now outright laughing._

_“You’re the bird, Scully. You tell me,” he says, continuing the charade, still making the bird call. “Is the intensity of this reenactment stirring within you a devastating desire to jump me?”_

_She assesses him, surveying his stance and listening to the shrill sound coming from his lips. “No,” she says dryly, but for a second there he feels like it’s a lie. “What’s devastating is that I’m still doing this,” she says, suddenly realizing that her arms are raised like little bird wings and immediately returning to Scully mode._

_He shakes it off, resuming his story. “But no matter what I did to entice it to the window, it wouldn’t move,” he says. “It was too scared of me, Scully.” He looks at her quizzical eyebrow. “I’m not scary, am I?”_

_“You don’t scare me, Mulder,” she answers. “Then again I’m not a bird.” She pauses, a blush rising to her face. “Recent actions notwithstanding.”_

_He cracks a smile at her embarrassment. “You know, Scully,” he says. “Embracing your own ridiculousness will make you impervious to virtually all forms of social discomfort.”_

_“You were saying, Mulder?”_

_“Right,” he says, dropping the charade and continuing his anecdote without the added flair. “It was as though I was presenting to it the potential of freedom. But only if it were willing to confront its fear of death.”_

_“And did it?”_

_“No,” he concludes anticlimactically, a low sigh escaping him.“It didn’t fly out the window until I left the room.”_

_“Oh,” she says, sounding disappointed by the ending._

_“I think it’s symbolic.”_

_“Of what?” she says, emphasizing the ‘what’._

_“I don’t know yet.” He pauses, his eyebrows scrunching inward, thinking about this as he walks to the kitchen to get them something to drink. “But there’s an allegory in there. I know it,” he calls back to her._

_“Maybe I’ll quit my day job and make it into a children’s’ book,” Scully jokes dismissively._

_When he walks back into the room she’s settling into the corner of his sofa, amusement still dancing on her face._

\+ + + + +

He could see that lights were flashing around him through his shut eyes. He heard the machinery next to him tuckering out, gradually slowing to a halt. 

He was smiling when he opened his eyes, before he was jolted back to the reality of his situation. His expression was a profound contrast with those of the men around him. 

Flashlights blinded him for a brief second; someone looked into his pupils and said, “False alarm. He’s with us again.” 

To Mulder’s right someone grumbled, disappointment evident in the tone when he said, “Piece of crap,” kicked the chair Mulder was in, and walked away. 

Mulder could make out their voices as a static buzzing, but their faces were covered in medical masks and safety goggles. 

“How long should we wait before knocking him out again?” someone asked. 

“Too risky to keep him conscious. Do it now.” 

“But he just—” 

“I know of the concerns. But he has a pulse now, doesn’t he? Do it.” 

As the needle pricked his epidermis, Mulder used his remaining coherent seconds to survey his surroundings. Dim lab room, warehouse-like ceiling, grey walls with electrical outlets everywhere. Futuristic looking cell phones.

A small window in the corner of the room left ajar, some outdoor light slipping in. 

_The potential of freedom in exchange for confronting the fear of death._

Mulder’s face was too rubbery and drugged for him to say with any degree of certitude whether or not it formed the smile he felt right then.

He wiggled his wrists and found the binding loose. So loose that he could probably slide his hands through, if his neurons were currently transmitting messages to his muscles effectively. 

Curious.

A young man with dark hair hovered over him, looked at his hands, and met his gaze knowingly. His stare was not menacing, and even in Mulder’s cloudy state, the message was unmistakable. 

The man tilted his head towards the window, then looked back at Mulder.

Though he clung desperately to lucidity, the room swirled out of focus. As he drifted past the state of consciousness, he could swear he heard the distinct echo of a whistle. 

++++++++++++++++++++

Apparently she and Mulder had different definitions of the word “attic”. What Mulder meant by attic (and it took her hours to figure this out, but maybe that was the point) was: hidden compartment inside an upstairs bedroom closet that consisted of a hollowed out foot of space on a slight incline.

She found what he’d left for her, in any case, and she’d read the letter that went along with it. It had taken her so long that she had to switch her flight out of Providence to the Red-Eye, where she currently sat by the window and prayed for no company. 

She just wanted to pull the letter out again. Reading it was the equivalent of awakening his voice in her head, the cadence of smooth and even enunciation. As it was, she’d spent enough time trying to convince people she was okay and she definitely didn’t need another late-night traveler by her side. 

When no one showed up in the seat next to her and the seatbelt sign came on, indicating they were almost ready to take-off, she exhaled a sigh of relief so audible that the person two seats in front of her turned around to locate its source. 

Scully shrugged this off. She reached into her bag to pull out the letter, a small part of her secretly wishing that this were a long plane ride back to D.C. Solitude seemed like such a blessing in light of all she’d been through lately. She was free of the burden of interaction, which was both rare and welcome.

Inside the letter was a small computer-like chip. She held it in her hand and reread his note for the fourth time this evening. 

_Dear Dana,_

_Writing you is, on this third attempt, proving a nearly unbearable struggle. I’m imagining the state in which this letter may be finding you. At that alone, it’s hard to continue. I predicted you wouldn’t cease your search due to the words on the surface of my former letter, though I’d hoped to be wrong about that. I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to you because of your desire to find me._

_I ‘m enclosing the only piece of evidence I managed to remove from the scene I previously described. I have had no luck determining what information is stored inside, nor with researching the specifics of this device. I haven’t sought the expertise of our friends for the same reason I haven’t shared with you what I’ve wished to share, ever since the moment this knowledge fell upon me._

_Should I not be able to write again, Scully, I feel impelled to share some sentiments about the invaluable time we’ve shared, in hopes these words might someday find you, or you them. I’m blessed with the blissful recollection of your skeptic eye and even bigger heart, with the trust and faith you have placed in me. I can only hope that my stubborn and often foolish determination to seek answers to what have been unanswerable questions will not continue to let you down so severely. I hold dear to my heart the faith and hope that my dreams of a less perilous future with you can still somehow be realized. You’ve taught me about hope, Scully. I, nor this pen, possess the means necessary to express my unyielding love for you. Should we meet again, I will demonstrate, in no uncertain terms._

_-Mulder_

She should have been used to the tremble of her hands by now, since lately it seemed to be as common as the presence of books in a library. She looked around the plane, pressing her lips together to conceal the quiver of her jaw. Lost in Mulder’s words, she hadn’t realized they were accelerating on the runway, almost in the air. 

Her eyes welled; Scully made sure no one was looking when she pulled out a tissue from the side-pocket of her bag and dabbed, squeezing her other hand together, hard, to distract herself from the raging onslaught of projected anguish. _Should I not be able to write again._ His words echoed in her head, the sound of his voice taking on a life of its own. 

_The state this letter may find you in…_

She read his words again. Mulder meant “state” with regard to emotion, but she was thinking about something else entirely: the small life inside of her. The fear that coursed through her veins at the thought of never being able to tell him. The ludicrous nature of the idea that _she_ taught _him_ hope when all evidence pointed to the reversed version of that sentence, because when he whispered, _Never give up on a miracle,_ despite all the loud and rampant self-preserving inclinations consuming her, she _listened._

She never let go of the idea. 

A faint beeping broke her from her thought process. She rotated the computer chip in the palm of her shaky hand, realizing it was responsible for the disruption. She glanced around her, shoving the plastic and metal into a cushioned compartment of her purse. She hoped this would mask the sound. 

She folded Mulder’s letter and placed it her pocket, saying a silent prayer that no one would turn around to look at her right now. She took out her journal, the words to him already rushing through her cognitive passageways, causing her hand to twitch in anticipation when she gave it a pen. She’d write him a response; she’d release all the most prominent thoughts on her conscience, those which she longed most desperately to tell him, with the hope that someday he would read them. Or, at the very least, maybe this could fulfill her immediate need for some form of catharsis. 

_Mulder,_

_I’m seated on a plane now and my first thought is that you’re not here, beside me as you have been for these past seven years. I long to hear your voice and see your face with a desire so thick it penetrates my dreams. I have nightmares in which people are doing terrible things to you. I only wish to know for sure so I can bring you back home. Safe._

_For days I have been thinking about when I find you, and how to say what it is I’m about to practice saying here. I am carrying our child, Mulder. I’m not even sure how… I don’t know if I can put as much stock in the implausible as you have for so long, but it’s real. The tests are conclusive. My memories of our times together are…surreal, though I did not know how thriving those moments were with the promise of such a miracle._

She stopped writing for the time being, her pen trembling in her hand, unable to continue while maintaining an appropriate passenger’s demeanor. Instead, she flipped her journal back to an entry she wrote just over a month ago, in need of considerable distraction.

_March 29th_

_“Do you believe this is happening, Scully?” he said to me. And after the hours I’ve had to process what just happened, what I can’t believe most is that we waited this long…_

++++++++++++++++++++

Skinner’s doorbell rang in the middle of the goddamn night, and this wasn’t the first time. The smell of rain and earth was wafting in through his partially open windows downstairs. It’d been down-pouring for what seemed like days. Skinner cleared the coated grogginess of sleep from his voice before he opened the door.

He had to squint, his eyes adjusting to the lighting and trying to make out the figure of the woman before him. He’d have been shocked to find Marita Covarrubias at his door, had this been a year or two ago, but pretty much nothing shocked him anymore. Her eyes were hollow and wet, her expression downright chilling, so he let her inside, locked the door behind her, and excused himself to put on some more clothes. 

“Are office visits during business hours a thing of the past?” he said when he came back downstairs to greet the unexpected woman. She was standing right where he left her, in the hallway in front of the door, her feet still stuck as though paralyzed on his doormat and her clothes dripping wet from the rain outside. 

“They’re monitoring the Hoover building,” she said, her voice crisp. Direct, but rushed. “It’s not safe there.” She looked around his house. The living room and the kitchen combined. She met his gaze, her eyebrows furrowed in an expression he could only assume conveyed nervousness. “It may not be safe here either.” 

“What brings you to my front door?” He’d had only a few encounters with her and he hardly knew anything about this woman, beyond her connection with the U.N. and Mulder’s propensity to cite her, cryptically, as a source in his reports. 

“I came to talk about Agent Mulder,” she whispered.

Skinner’s eyes lit up despite himself. The hope of finding Mulder was ablaze somewhere within; the responsibility and guilt tied knots in his neck and back. His muscles spasmed up some nights, startling him awake with his heart in full-blown fury. 

“Come,” he said, evening his voice. “Have a seat.”

When she was reluctant to budge he placed his hand, gentle, on her wrist and guided her towards the couch in the relative darkness. Her eyes darted around his house as they moved. When she was seated, he flipped the switch and gave more light to the surroundings. He took in everything about her visage. The woman appeared downright panicky, unlike herself.

“Let me get you something to drink,” he said.

In the kitchen he put some hot water on the stove and pulled some teabags out of a box of Celestial Seasonings, chamomile or something. His wife liked that. 

_Sharon_. He said her name in his head, grateful she was out of town this week. Not because he’d begrudge her the right to be confused, but because hell if he knew the answers to the projected list of her questions he formed in his head. 

But most women liked chamomile tea, probably. Soothing.

What he truly wanted, unaware and scared of what Marita was about to say, was some whiskey. 

Neat.

She appeared to have calmed a bit when he returned. 

“Thank you,” she said. Her lips quivered, her body probably cold from her saturated clothes. 

“I saw something that night,” he started, getting right to the point through gritted teeth.

“I know,” she replied. 

Skinner let out a breath, hard, bracing himself. 

“When I met with The Smoking Man he said more than I divulged in our previous encounter,” she confessed, looking forward in concentration, as though if she didn’t say this now, she’d never work up the courage. “He was trying to persuade Alex to search for a spaceship that collided with a military aircraft.” 

“I know that much,” he said. He took a seat on the other side of the couch. 

“He said it was ‘ _hidden in plain sight_ ,’” she whispered. 

“And?” Skinner took a sip of his tea, concentrating too hard on this conversation to notice its temperature before the hot liquid scalded his tongue. He coughed a bit as it scorched his throat, but he welcomed the sting. 

“I think it was a goose chase. It’s more than possible there was no spaceship. The search was an attempt at distracting Krycek and myself from the fact that there was nothing extraterrestrial in the air that night at all.” In the dim light, Skinner watched as she set her tea on the coffee table, presumably possessing enough brain power to let hers cool. “To divert our attention from what was really going on.” 

“What was really going on?” he asked, noticing the way the rush of his query gave away his eagerness.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Not for sure.” 

“What do you _think_ was going on?” 

Marita breathed in, deep and even. She placed her palms flat on her knees and leaned forward slightly. When she turned her head, finally, to look at him, he could see that her lips were chapped and cakey, bitten to a point where blood might seep through. “I think the government kidnapped civilians that night, making it look like an alien abduction.”

Skinner swallowed. “I know what I saw,” he said insistently as she shook her head. He made note of the way she dismissed this idea and paused, looking at her in disbelief, at the expression on her face. The fear. “What about the disruption in frequencies?” he said, loud and distracted. “The lost time?” 

“That can all be government-manipulated now. Radio wavelengths, flying saucers. They have the technology….” She evened her tone. If she was anything but calm now, her voice refused to let on. 

“What kind of technology?” 

Marita furrowed her brow and stared at him, as though she’d been both waiting and fearing that question for years. She took in a breath, her mouth parting only slightly, her blond hair falling across her face. “I’m going to tell you a story,” she said. “About my time at the U.N.”

Skinner sat back, further into the cushion of his sofa. “Okay,” he said. 

He waited. 

Marita’s eyes glanced up at the ceiling, looking as though she’d just signed up to write an entire novel and didn’t know which chapter came first. 

“When I was initially hired there, they were ‘retiring’ a whole generation of employees,” Marita started. She picked up her tea by the handle and slowly took a sip. “They explained this by claiming there were large budget cuts, but it was speculated to be for other reasons.” She set her tea down. “The retirees got million-dollar pensions. Money mysteriously appeared in their IRAs and bank accounts.” 

“Why?” 

“They were nicknamed the Sputniks by the others who had worked with them here. The ones who hadn’t been dismissed.” Skinner, trying to take this all it, couldn’t help but feel as though he missed an important part of the story and was thankful when she continued. “They consisted of anyone working there in 1946, right after the United Nations came to be,” she said. “Anyone still there who had had contact with the Russians during the race to space. It was said that they knew too much.” 

“Knew too much about what? They beat us to space. The end.” Jesus, he couldn’t believe people still weren’t over that. 

“Indeed,” Marita said, acknowledging this point. “They also beat us to the discovery of extraterrestrial life. And extraterrestrial technology.” 

“What are you saying?” His voice held frustration now. 

“It’s all speculation. I believe it now because it’s the only thing that makes sense.” She met his inquisitive eyes. “You asked me about technology earlier,” she said, going back as though she could just press a rewind button to steer her out of his line of questioning; he was so confused that she probably could. “The technology to manipulate wavelengths and time, to build an alien spacecraft?” 

“Yes.” 

“It’s stolen intelligence,” she said, and it was the most certain she sounded all night. “It did not originate here.” 

“You’re saying aliens exist? That you’ve seen them? That they have technology we’re using?”

“There are aliens among us,” she said, purity in her conviction. “Hidden, being tortured into revealing their secrets. I don’t believe them to be malevolent. The government has pushed that notion on us since the Russians discovered unearthly life.” She turned to him and studied his face, probably finding a great deal of skepticism there. “I don’t think we’re simply using this technology. I believe we stole it.” 

“What?” The question came out fast and dismissive, but he was really asking. 

She laughed darkly for a second before resting her elbow on her knee, moving her forearm up, and placing her forehead despondently in her palm. She wasn’t laughing anymore when she looked back at him. “Propaganda, Agent Skinner. I know you’re familiar with how dangerous it is in the hands of anyone with an agenda. Crop circles…. abductions… experimentation. All things the government has used alien technology to manipulate, so the people would fear the unknown and the U.S. could pass the technology off as its own.”

“What sorts of technology?” 

“Green energy. Solar power. How to contain the CO2 emissions released into the atmosphere. The list goes on. There’s been evidence –” she stopped. “Buried evidence,” she corrected herself, “that we had access to this intelligence decades before it was revealed.”

“Posit this is true,” Skinner said. “Why on earth would we wish to conceal something like that?”

“Their species is dying, Agent Skinner. They’re now in immediate danger of extinction as we further contaminate the atmosphere. They wished only to _give_ us this technology for the purpose of the sustainability of their species and their home.” Maybe she could somehow tell he was beginning to consider her story. Maybe that’s why she stretched a little further, whispering now. “The longer it’s ignored, the easier it is to usurp that intelligence without opposition. If the U.S. isn’t stopped, they’ll annihilate a species.” 

“And the Russians?” Skinner cleared his throat. He downed his tea, now lukewarm, as though he were taking a shot of liquor. 

Marita nodded at his question. “The true source for the conflict between our countries,” she said bleakly. “Greed. Money. _Space._ According to my sources, communism was merely the most plausible of several trialed fronts for the Cold War.” 

Oh, _good god_ , Skinner thought. Where were the three stooges when there was a good conspiracy theory in front of you? They’d absorb this stuff like a Bounty paper towel. 

But still, the look on Marita’s face told him not to dismiss her so easily. 

“It is rumored that this was the reason for the simultaneous ‘retirement’ of an entire generation of UN diplomats. In 1997, when I arrived, these people drew up the _Kyoto Protocol_ as a way of silently opposing the U.S and its suppression of this technology, sending a message to the government that they hadn’t forgotten. They knew that the Russians wanted to share the technology with civilians. The discoveries. The U.S. threatened to use force so they could keep it.” 

Skinner noticed, in between her words, that Marita never allied herself with this country. She never said “we”. A refusal to be associated, disgust evident in her tone.

‘Think about it, Agent Skinner,” she continued when he didn’t say anything. “This country has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, despite all the concerns it has raised, all the dangers inherent in doing nothing. And why? Because they have the power to change energy at any time they want. To reverse the damage, even.” 

“Why the hell not?” 

“To appear heroic? To save the planet when it becomes most imperative that they do so? Like I said, the longer they can wait, the more drastic the situation becomes for those it threatens. If the U.S. neglects these environmental concerns long enough, alien technology will be available to them with little to no resistance. And the U.S. would hold in its hands more power than anyone ever dreamed of having.” 

“Kill off the entire the entire species of alien life? For power?” Skinner asked, thinking, not so willingly, that this didn’t sound all that far-fetched, considering his current stance on government greed and the ludicrous and unconnected nature of the other theories that had been swimming through his polluted streams of cognition. 

“Before their actual motives can be revealed to the human race,” she added. 

Skinner swallowed, hard, finding his throat dry and lamenting his empty cup. “What do you know about what they’ve done with Agent Mulder?”

She looked at him, her expression flat. “Not enough,” she whispered. “The Smoking Man was fixated on protecting The Project, but I have now realized The Project is not what I once thought it to be.” 

“It’s Oculus Mentis, then.” Skinner said, using what he learned from Mulder’s letter to Scully.

Marita stared, startled, seemingly about to ask him _how_ he knew, but instead she just looked away for a minute before continuing. When she did, her voice was clear. She seemed to choose her words very carefully

“That’s right. The idea behind it is that people who have had contact with _actual_ alien life pose the only true threat to this mission. They could reveal the motive of extraterrestrials and uncover the government’s agenda.” 

She took a sip of tea, and if it weren’t for the way that her hand shook as she raised the teacup to her mouth, Skinner would have had no evidence that she wasn’t perfectly comfortable telling him all of this. He just watched her, trying to absorb it all.

“I don’t know anything for sure, ADA Skinner. But The Project, I’ve come to believe, is designed to utilize alien technology to erase the memories of extraterrestrial encounters and replace them with new memories, filled with propaganda and loyalty to the government.” Every so often Marita turned her gaze, staring at him like she was trying to figure out if he thought this was all a crock of bull. He stared back, fixated, sending her as reassuring a message as he could muster. “Meanwhile,” she said, “great effort has been put into maintaining and instilling fear of the unknown in the populace. They’ve made believers out to be ridiculous by staging sightings, abducting people on their own, experimenting, and returning them. They’ve made aliens an enemy.” 

“This is why they didn’t take Agent Scully,” Skinner stated, trying to make sense of it all, put it into context. 

“Yes. She was a victim of governmental forces, not alien, taken to feed Mulder’s determination in believing in extraterrestrial malevolence.” Marita paused, bowing her head. “She saw nothing she wasn’t meant to see.” 

“And Agent Mulder? You think they’re wiping out his memory?” 

“At least part of it. I’m not sure why they took him to begin with,” she stated. “Mulder was one of the largest reasons for all of the diversion. His intelligence and resolve are their biggest threats. I’ve overheard that he’s been lead purposefully towards lies for his entire career.” 

“He saw something about the project. Something they don’t want him to remember,” Skinner provided. She nodded at him, as if she suspected that much. 

Marita stood up, walking towards his entranceway with no explanation. She faced him once she reached the door. “My biggest fear is that this technology being used on Agent Mulder is in the hands of people who don’t know how to use it.” 

He opened the door for her. What he really wanted to do was run down a list of thirty more questions he had for her. Questions no one probably knew the answers to. 

“Where are they doing this?” he said, choosing the most important among them. 

“I don’t know where he is,” she replied, a hollow despondence slipping into her vocals. An apology became apparent in her eyes. “I only came to tell you where he isn’t,” she added, looking up to the clouded-over stars. Skinner looked up with her.

She turned around to walk down the stairs, her head spinning back around after a few steps. “If they find you,” she started. “And ask who your source is?” 

“You were never here,” he said.

“No,” she corrected, her teeth sinking into her lower lip. “State your source. I’ve done this long enough, Agent Skinner. I’m tired.”

“But you’re…” He was about to say she was …young, scared. That it would all be okay, but he could make no such assertion. 

“If they get that far, I stand no chance,” she said, dismissing his reluctance with a look of certitude. “One of us may as well live.” 

He nodded. “Why did you come here, Marita?” 

She paused. Her face told him she was unsure whether or not to answer honestly. He felt the shrug she delivered from yards away.

“I wanted to come here,” she said. “What I suspect… the things I’ve just revealed to you… has been pieced together from years of speculation and overheard, fragmented conversations,” she continued. “The recent additions to this knowledge are…” she said, pausing. She squeezed the car keys in her hand and rephrased the start of her sentence. “It doesn’t matter which side I’m on or pretend to be on anymore.” She looked up and down his street, fear of a thousand deaths in her eyes. “That I know at all is enough for them.” 

He heard the words that needn’t be uttered.

It wasn’t until he watched her drive away that Skinner noticed the rained had stopped, only to be replaced by the deluge of information now flooding his consciousness.


	6. No comfort in the shade of the shadows thrown

[ ](http://s1179.photobucket.com/albums/x396/adrenalin211/?action=view&current=_thb_Screenshot127-tile2.jpg)

**Chapter 6: No comfort in the shade of the shadows thrown**

Scully’s cell phone rang about ten seconds after she turned it back on. She was walking to the parking garage from the arrivals gate at Reagan National, clutching the microchip in her left hand while her right remained close to her waist, stiff feel of her gun through the thin layer of the jacket that concealed it. Her eyes took in her surroundings, but at this late (or early) hour, the lack of congestion at the airport made her even edgier than was standard lately. Her heartbeat picked up, the memory of walking into a not-so-empty house consuming her with heightened adrenaline. She flipped open her phone. Who was calling her this late?

“Scully,” she said into the receiver. 

( _Scully, it’s me,_ she wanted to hear.) 

Instead, Skinner’s voice rang through from the other end, clear and urgent. 

“Agent Scully, I’ve been trying to contact you. Where are you?” 

“I was on the Red-Eye from Rhode Island. My phone was off,” she said, a little defensive. “Where are you?” 

The sidewalks were dark; the streetlight that lit her way to lot B was out, but she managed to spot her car, continuing to survey her surroundings through the dimness.

Scully could hear Skinner release a breath, forceful, through the line. “I’m at home,” he said, quick. “I have some information you need to hear.” 

Her mind jumped to Mulder, to bad news, good news, news that would be neither good nor bad but a lead to follow. She’d come up with about ten different scenarios he might utter and had semi-reacted to each one of them in a single heartbeat, a last minute attempt to prepare herself for the onslaught of grief, relief, or whatever it was that would soon compromise her fragile composure. She could feel her voice quietly shaking before she even spoke.

“What is it?”

“I just got off the phone with Frohike,” Skinner said, dismissing her question. “He said we could all meet there. I called Doggett, too. I’m headed out as we speak.” 

“Fill me in now,” she said. She meant to sound demanding but her tone betrayed her entirely.

“I don’t know anything about Mulder’s whereabouts or condition,” he offered. “But I can’t say more on here. This line may not be secure.”

She took a deep breath and released it. It came out staggered, as though she were recovering from an illness involving bronchial spasm. It was a good place to meet, she told herself, in light of what she planned to go show them anyway. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. I have information for you, too.” 

She glanced around her one last time before getting into her vehicle, removing the chip from the potentially damaging crevices of her clammy palm. 

Scully turned her key in the ignition, flicked her headlights on, and drove out of the parking garage, pondering the zero-to-sixty capabilities of a ‘00 Corolla.

++++++++++++++++++++ 

This was the second consecutive night you were forced awake by a jarring clamor. This time it was a knock on your door and you took five long minutes to answer it, both because you hadn’t the energy to move faster and you lacked the conviction that this concerned anything more than a minor mishap and someone’s oblivious overreaction. 

“What is it?” you managed, swinging the door open just as the trespasser of peace was about to knock again. 

“Sorry to wake you.” Strughold was responsible for this cacophony, and you made an educated guess that this uncertain edge to his voice you heard was panic. Probably was the only explanation for a person to sound out of breath after standing still at a door for five minutes. A person who was not dying of lung cancer, at least. 

“Cut to the chase,” you said, anger penetrating your vocal cords. This seemed to augment his worry until you started wheezing, at which point his sorry face filled with pity, which was unnerving. “Conrad,” you urged through a cough. 

“The man I sent didn’t find the chip,” he practically spat out, sounding like he was in a confessional. 

“And why is that?” you said, keeping your tone calm. 

“He tore the place apart. Looked all day. Then he had to leave.” 

You shook your head, none of this making sense. “ _Why_ did he have to leave?” 

“Said some woman showed up.” Strughold announced. “He didn’t get a good look at her, but there is no mystery here. He said he caught of glimpse of red hair.” 

Your palms began to sweat. You swallowed. Where were your damn cigarettes?

“And what did he do then?” you asked, presuming the answer just as the question left your mouth.

“Only thing he could do. He fled!” Strughold said, exasperation written in the twitch of his eye and the way he held his mouth slightly open, as though he were as appalled and aghast as you. 

“No, Conrad,” you corrected. “That’s not the _only_ thing he could have done.” 

You watched his expression as he absorbed the meaning of his words. 

“Your orders weren’t to--”

“I was wrong to assume you’ve known me long enough to presume what my orders would have been in that predicament,” you spat, sarcasm laced in every breath. “Did he watch her from the distance? See what she was doing there?”

“No.” 

“Incompetent fool,” you muttered. Anger flooded through your blood, surging through your body like white water rapids. “You tried tracking the chip?” 

“We checked. It said out of range.” Strughold was pure fear right now. His hands were shaking while you remained fixated on his nervous eyes. 

“So it moved locations,” you stated. Agent Scully had to be in possession. There was no other explanation for the tracking service to fade to a state of untraceable. You bit your lip and stared heatedly at Strughold, now allowing your livid demeanor to be exposed. Displaying it outright, in fact. “And that is not the result of one of _our_ men,” you snapped, moving a step closer to him until he visibly shivered. For some reason, you weren’t needing to wheeze or catch your breath at this point, your energy seemingly constructed from pure adrenaline and ire. “What do you think that means for us, Conrad?” 

“Sir,-”

“ _What_ do you think that means?”

“It means we’re compromised.” 

“It _means_ you have to send one of your men to track down agent Scully and reacquire the device.” You were so close you were breathing into his face, feeling the tremble as it made its way through his body. “By any means necessary,” you added. “Have I made myself clear?” 

“Yes, sir.” He was nodding, not able to move fast enough to your door. 

“Conrad?” you said, making him turn back to face you. When he did you summoned the fear of fatality into your eyes. “Not some inept buffoon this time.” 

+++++++++++++++++++++

The sounds overwhelming this dark and cluttered room were plentiful. She heard the hum of idling computer monitors, the background static of old speakers, and the light click of Skinner’s shoes as he paced the floor, his voice crisp and low as he revealed what was told to him. 

Byers, Langley, and Frohike remained perfectly still for the duration, their eyes a collective and somnolent combination of wonder, privilege, and sleep deprivation. 

She noticed that Agent Doggett, on the other hand, had started to tap his pencil against the arm of his chair about five minutes into it, loosening his tie until it was almost completely off. Then, she assumed the story got to be too much to allow for his skepticism to breathe. He abandoned the pretense of sitting still and began to fidget like a toddler in a grocery cart, his discomfort apparent in the way his eyes darted around the room, seemingly paying attention more to the decrepit file cabinet in the corner than to Skinner’s words. 

But he didn’t interrupt. Not once. 

Scully, well. She listened and was scared by the way it made some kind of sense to her. More than that, though, she couldn’t stop thinking about the letter in her pocket, the softness of Mulder’s voice a frail hymn in her ear. 

_My unyielding love for you._

When Skinner was done fielding questions he couldn’t answer, he looked over at Scully and said, “What about you? Did you find anything in Rhode Island?” 

She snapped more fully into the present at that, pulling the chip out of her bag. “He wrote me a letter. And left this,” she said, holding the thin object between her thumb and index finger. She cleared her thoughts with the hope to even out her voice. “Someone was in the house before me, presumably looking for the same thing I was, but he darted off when I got there.” 

Skinner’s eyes met her, his expression nervous. 

“Mulder took it from the Pentagon, and put it in a hidden compartment upstairs. He said he didn’t have any luck finding something to open it.” 

Langley had already stepped closer to her and was squinting at the chip in her hand when he nearly gasped, looking back at Frohike and Byers and saying, “It’s a Microtech Postremo-chip. Thirty gigabyte.”

Byers and Frohike’s faces drained of color. They shared a look. Scully swallowed. 

“You fellows mind speakin’ English?” Doggett grumbled.

“Hoooo,” Langley breathed out, his eyes still on the chip. “This is…. wow. Only twenty computers were made that can read this kind of microprocessor,” he stated. Then he replaced talking with continued gaping. 

“And…” Scully said, eying him impatiently. “…Are you in possession of one of them?” 

Frohike walked forward. “Boy, are we ever!” He looked up at Byers, raising an eyebrow while moving closer. “I seem to recall _someone_ declaring it a waste of space,” he accused. “A _‘foolish investment’_ were the words used, I believe. Do you remember who that _someone_ was?” he asked Byers. 

Byers was likely about to defend himself when Skinner stepped between them, as though he had to break up a potentially perilous fight. “Can we please just turn on a machine and figure out what’s stored inside?” he snapped.

Langley had already escaped to the back room, presumably to acquire the rare and fancy super computer. What he wheeled out was quite the sight. Gigantic screen. And despite the dust covering the plastic and glass, the thinness and gleam of it made it seem positively futuristic. Langley pressed a button and the machine hummed to life. 

She handed the chip to Byers. “It was beeping when I was on the plane,” she said. “I don’t know what that means.” 

“It was beeping?” he asked, emphasizing the last word with what seemed to be concern in his voice.

“Yes, when I was in the air. Is that bad?” she asked. “Will you still be able to open it?” 

Byers, Langley, and Frohike looked at each other, fear now infiltrating their gazes. 

“It means it can be tracked. This chip has been implanted with a thin metal strip that is traceable if you have the right technology,” Langley said. “Probably why they knew to look in Mulder’s summer home,” he added as the pieces started to fall together. 

“We know because for these chips, a beep can only mean one thing,” Byers said.

“Out of range,” Frohike interrupted, stealing his thunder. “Which makes sense if you said it happened when you were on a plane.” 

“Can you deactivate it?” Scully asked. “The tracking?” she clarified, though they looked like they understood her.

“We’ll only have about thirty seconds after we put it in the computer to try,” Byers informed. “If we can’t, a signal is sent to its activation point, which would give away our location.” 

“Not to mention the fact that the files inside have been accessed,” said Langley, his expression very serious.

“Do you think you can do it that fast?” she asked Byers. 

“Someone could conceivably be tracing this chip as we speak,” he said. “They probably are, in fact. So it’s definitely worth a try.”

Frohike took the device from Byers’ hands and brought it over to the machine. “We’re compromised as it is,” he said. “Might as well attempt to lessen the extent.” 

“Which one of you is gonna try to deactivate this?” Skinner asked. 

“I am,” said Frohike and Langley, both at once. They proceeded to look at each other disdainfully.

“Which of you is _faster_ at it?” Skinner rephrased. 

Frohike begrudgingly handed the chip to Langley, whose grin spread wide across his face. “I’ll need silence,” he said, hanging the weight of the situation over their heads, as though they’d all forgotten. 

Scully held her breath as he inserted the chip. She glanced at her watch, feeling a thin layer of sweat forming on her lower back. 

Letters and numbers were popping up on the screen as Langley input command prompts so fast she could barely read what he was typing, not that she’d understand either way. Even Agent Doggett was huddled with the rest of them around the computer, watching and waiting.

Langley paused to wipe his forehead, then immediately resumed typing. The computer seemed to be spouting out nonsense at a rate faster than he could keep up with, but after several more seconds and a firm tap of the ‘Enter’ key, Langley stood up and hollered, “Got it!” victory and certitude in his tone.

“Are you _sure_?” Scully wanted to know. 

“Sure as two plus two is four,” he said, accepting the fist bump Frohike sent his way. “Nobody’s gonna track that bad boy anymore.” 

Frohike mock-typed in the air, dangling his phalanges about as he took Langley’s place in the computer chair. “Now let’s see what’s on it,” he said. 

Scully moved forward, positioning herself at a better angle to view the screen. Her heart seemed to creep into her throat in anticipation, every pulse point in her body waiting with disquieting unrest, surging through her with the hope of uncovering Mulder’s whereabouts. 

Everyone in the room stilled as though someone watching them had pushed a pause button and the only thing not abiding was Frohike’s right index finger, which clicked open various folders, allowing everyone ample time to see and absorb each one, their eyes glued to the monitor as though magnetic forces were propelling them to never look away. 

It was… a sight. 

From what Scully could make of it, there were chair designs, 3-D sketches of entire architectural room plans, containing the chairs with people in them, computer monitors attaching wires to their frontal lobes, mathematics she wasn’t sure Einstein could even understand. She furrowed her brow.

It was like her dream.

One file Frohike opened contained a topographic map of the Bellefleur, Oregon forest and what looked like rough images of a flying saucer design. 

Her beating pulse was replaced with the sharp chill that ran through her bones and worked its way outward, causing goosebumps to rise up the span of her arms. 

Frohike clicked open a file-folder entitled “Filch Sites” which held inside of it three sets of latitudinal and longitudinal combinations. She absorbed the numbers, her eyes wide with hope. 

“Glory be,” was the first thing anyone had said in five minutes and it was Frohike who spoke the words. “I think this might be where--” he cut himself off, as though suddenly realizing the weight of words. 

“Byers,” Scully said, barely finding her voice behind a tremor. “When you were looking at air radar from that night?” She said, waiting for him to nod before she continued, knowing he’d remember. “Did you see anything headed in any of these directions?” 

She watched as Byers’ adam’s apple moved inside his throat as he swallowed. His hand was shaking when he lifted it towards the screen. “Maybe that one,” he said, his voice dry as he selected the middle of the three. “I can verify for you,” he said. “See if that’s where it landed.” 

“Please,” Scully said, and he took off to investigate in a computer nook to her right. 

A voice from behind startled her a bit. Agent Doggett had a dusty globe in his hand and was spinning it on its axis when he slowed it, stopped it from moving, and inspected it before he said, “Nevada,” with authority. “If the radar verifies it, Agent Mulder was taken to Nevada.” 

Byers came back nodding. “I’ve got radar detectable from Oregon that shows up at those _exact_ coordinates and is detectable again about thirty minutes later. It must have flown below radar for some time, but didn’t manage for the whole journey.” 

“Then that’s where we’re going,” Agent Doggett said. 

Skinner met her eyes and nodded.

 _Nevada_ , Scully said to herself, over and over again until the word sounded foreign. 

_Then that’s where we’re going._

++++++++++++++++++++

The parking lot of Scully’s apartment building was filled up, which was unusual for a Tuesday evening, especially at this early hour. There was probably some kind of wild drunken grad-school gathering going on at her neighbor Chatty Cathy’s house, whose name was appropriately Kathy, though Scully often wished it started with a C, just for the sake of coincidental amusement. Anyway, she had to park her car on the street, which wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that now, once she finished packing (she’d have to summon all of her focus to remember things like toothpaste, underwear, and clothes to sleep in _this_ frazzled state of mind) she’d have to cart her suitcase two blocks down to Haverford Street. 

She had exactly one hour (well, minus three minutes) before Skinner and Doggett were supposed to meet her at Reagan and fly out to Carson City (layover in Dallas), where they’d drive the forty minutes or so to the coordinates Frohike had found buried deep within the files of the chip she’d found. 

Had there been vacancies in the lot, she’d have entered through the back and that would have been the end of it, but since there weren’t, thankfully, she was able to notice the unfamiliar black sedan that was idling by the entrance. The one she first saw when she dejectedly turned out of the full lot to park elsewhere. The one that was still there, idling, after her two-block walk home, its windows tinted unnecessarily in the obscurity of this too early hour. 

She didn’t dare try to look into them.

Nothing her heart had done all _day_ was comparable to what it was doing right this second, hurried steps towards the door, her key sliding between her fingers like a weapon. 

She tried to control the pace of her steps as she escaped into the building, not looking back. 

+++++++++++++++++++++

The space surrounding him was gloomy and frigid, a current of air drafting in from somewhere unknown. Mulder was shivering as he opened his eyes, absorbing his surroundings.

In his mind, he was still trying to determine how to sign off the letter he’d written Scully. 

_Always, Mulder_

_Love, Mulder_

_Until I see you again, Mulder._

He had wanted it to be meaningful. On the other hand, he didn’t want to overthink it or sound corny.

It had taken him longer to decide this in the actual moment than it took him to realize the reality of his current situation, the force of which hit him like a stack of jagged slate stones falling down all at once, their sharp edges dragging across his flesh. 

The memory he’d just allowed these men to witness. 

Suddenly, he was thrashing, unable to control his body, his movements protesting the leather bound around his wrists and ankles. 

_SHIT,_ he thought, for the first time realizing the flaw in his plan to always imagine Scully. 

What had he _done_?

What they’d do to her…

If they thought that she knew… 

Thought that she’d seen his letter…

“SCULLY,” he yelled into the room, realizing it wouldn’t serve to warn her but unable to suppress an impulse surging through him to say her name. His protests were met only with the laughter of two men surrounding him. He realized the futility of shouting, but it didn’t matter to him.

“Scully,” he was saying, over and over, powerless to stop, a viscous ache coating his voice. His body was reacting horribly, an onslaught of fear pushing against all pressure points and nerves, his head throbbing out its disapproval of his thrashing, yet hopeless to control it. 

“For Christ’s sake,” someone said before walking away. Mulder couldn’t tell which one was which. “You sedate him,” he said to the other. “I’ll tell the boss.” 

“Yes,” said the other man. 

He barely heard the door shut through his spasms, but when Mulder winced, preparing himself for yet another brew of drugs that would at least distract him from the insane worry charging through his veins, he was met with different situation entirely. 

He felt a hand cover his mouth and the eerie sense of human breath close to his ear. 

Mulder tried to concentrate.

 _What the hell?_

“Now,” whispered the man left behind. And, in a moment of clarity, Mulder realized it was the same man from the other day. _The memory of a whistle._ “Go” he whispered, as though irritated that Mulder hadn’t made any move to leave yet. 

Out of breath, his surroundings foggy, Mulder tested his binds, finding them lose and workable. Maybe with some wiggling he could slide out.

The man was walking calmly out of the room, leaving Mulder unsupervised. No sedation, no needles at all.

Then he realized what was responsible for the chill in bones. A window, ajar and drafty, a sliver of luminosity radiating through. 

++++++++++++++++++++

An intern stumbled into your room, yet again, but at least this time you weren’t interrupted from anything more than your morning coffee, a few Morley’s, and some dry wheat toast. 

“What is it, Aaron?” you said, deciding this one time to be cordial, determined nothing was going to quell your semi-decent mood that had miraculously manifested itself despite the very modest and often interrupted sleep you had last night.

“It’s Mulder, Sir,” he said, a face of worry showing. You were used to that look; it was the expression of every last person when they talked to you, extending all the way up the chain of experience from intern to retiree. “He had a memory,” he said.

“Let me guess,” you bemused. “Mulder and Scully.” You paused, thinking carefully, something cliché. “A Jacuzzi. Some champagne and strawberries?” 

“No, Sir,” he said, frowning. He looked you in the eye to continue and you definitely weren’t used to that. “A _relevant_ memory,” he emphasized. 

“Oh?” 

“Agent Mulder remembered writing a letter to Agent Scully,” he said, rushed now, like his information would never be revealed unless he told it in record time. “A letter in which he revealed everything he saw at the Pentagon and his suspicions about it. A letter he hid for her to find in the ceiling of the Hoover building’s basement.” 

You would not panic. You would _not_ panic. But you could feel the sweat on your neck dampening the back collar of your shirt and your pulse beating against the cuffs that were buttoned at your wrist. 

“Thank you, Eric,” you said, and somewhere inside it occurred to you that you had gotten his name wrong. When he didn’t budge, you simply said, “That will be all. As you were.” He disappeared out of your breakfast space. 

When your breathing evened and you could feel your thought processes as they burrowed their way back into your brain, you took a few more moments, then dialed Strughold’s number. 

“Hello, Sir?”

“Do you have a man surveying Agent Scully yet?” you said, in place of a greeting.

“Of course.” 

“Information has surfaced that makes the situation with her quite dire,” you whispered.

“Oh?” he said. His voice was groggy and fearfully appeasing, clearly coming out of slumber. 

“Tell your man to use lethal force while reacquiring the chip,” you said. “See to it that Agent Scully never presents a problem again.” 

You listened to Strughold’s swallow, audible through the receiver. 

“Have I made myself clear?” you said, seeking affirmation of your amended orders.

“You have, Sir,” he said, and then all you heard was the hum of the dial tone.


	7. Bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun

[ ](http://s1179.photobucket.com/albums/x396/adrenalin211/?action=view&current=_thb_Screenshot127-tile2.jpg)

* * *

**Chapter 7: Bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun**

Skinner shoved a few items of clothing into the smaller of his two suitcases, letting out a yawn, and realizing when he looked at his watch (6:04) that he’d be waking up around this time had he had a normal night. 

But it had been anything but normal, and he could really use a strong, hair-raising cup of coffee with more sugar and shots of espresso than he was accustomed to handling. He was about to carry his luggage down the stairs and make that dream a reality when he felt his cell phone vibrating inside of his pocket. 

“Skinner.” His voice sounded beaten to the ground when he spoke into the phone and silenced the buzzing.

“There’s someone following me,” he heard, and it took him less than two of her words to place the caller. 

“Scully? Where are you?” 

“I’m at my place,” she said, rushed, her voice an elevated trill, and for good reason. “There’s a black sedan parked in front of my building. I’ve never seen it here before. I went inside as fast as I could. I just looked through my blinds and it’s moved now. He’s parked illegally with almost a direct view of my apartment.” She paused and caught her breath. “I know I said I’d meet you at the airport, but--” 

“I’m coming to get you,” he stated, not making her ask. “Did he see you make him?” 

“I don’t think so,” she said. “But he’s not exactly trying to hide,” she added. 

“Stay put. I’m on my way.” 

He thought of expressions like ‘lead-foot’ and ‘pedal to the metal’ while driving full-speed to her residence, but hell, he’d gotten into this profession for a reason before he’d climbed up the ladders of authority. He was a cop at heart, and Scully was in danger. It turned on a switch within him, which is what he would have said to himself had he been operating under any sort of logic and not just pure adrenaline. Instinct. 

Fight or flight. He learned about human reactions when he was a Marine in Vietnam. About staying and engaging or fleeing and taking your chances at speed. He had to admit, there was a part of him that got a thrill out of this kind of task after being buried behind paperwork, a desk, corporate jargon, and systemic bureaucracy for these last few years. A thrill that provoked within him the desire to take his chances fighting tonight, but he wouldn’t feed that urge. Not at Scully’s expense. 

He immediately noticed the car she was referring to when he pulled up to her building lot. It stuck out like a hunting rifle in a pile of handguns. He wanted to interrogate the hell out of this guy (if it was a he – it was probably a he) until he got answers, but Skinner told himself to somehow locate his inner flight instinct and figure out a way to get her the hell out of here without injury. 

He noticed a fire-escape behind the building. It looked unstable and precarious, but it was less of a risk than her walking out in the open, so he made the decision to call her and tell her where to go, relocating his black CR-V in front of the back stairwell. 

“Thank you for coming so fast,” she said, not bothering with a greeting when she answered the phone. There was unquestionable fear in her voice. 

“I’m parked right under the fire escape,” he said. “I know it’s on the other side of the building, but can you make it out one of the windows and climb down?” 

She paused.

“I’ll have to ask one of the neighbors. Make up a story. But I can do that.” 

“Good. Leave your lights on, like you’re still home. And find a way out one of those windows. The car’s still in direct view of the entrance. I can’t be sure if I was spotted or not, but this is our best chance,” he said, urgency in every word. 

“I want to know what they want.” 

“Either you, the chip, or both. Destroyed,” Skinner said, trying to relay to her the gravity of the situation. He felt very much that she knew, but must have been overcome with the same impulse that he was, and training told him that they couldn’t entertain those right now and would have to wrestle with natural instinct. “It’ll buy us time if we can just make it to the airport, avoiding an encounter,” he continued, thinking about it for a moment. “Scully, we don’t know how dangerous he is.” His heartbeat fluttered in his chest when he looked at the vehicle again. 

“Okay,” she whispered her breath heavy on the other end. 

“I’ll watch for you.” 

“Thank you.” 

Not two minutes later, he saw a form emerging from a window on the third story, dangling her feet out until they hit the metal of the fire escape. A flash of red hair revealed itself in the early morning and he drove closer, directly under where she’d wind up as she descended. He looked behind him, where he saw the car moving, once again, from its space.

Skinner saw her locating his car in the back alley, her movements hurried and exact. She threw a small duffel bag over the side rail. It landed on the ground. He quickly got out of the car to put it in the trunk, whispering up to her, “Fast as you can. I think he spotted me.” 

Scully was three quarters of the way down the building’s fire-escape when the person in the vehicle became visible in the alley where Skinner was parked and hit the gas, hard, coming towards them fast. Skinner shouted at her, as though she didn’t already see it as it was happening, which obviously she had. “Scully, JUMP,” he shouted, standing between where she’d land and the bullet range of the car. 

She jumped. It was five feet up or so and her knees caught the bulk of her fall. She landed just barely on two feet, but wasted no time booking it for his SUV. 

Gunfire splayed out the window of the black sedan as it drew closer. Skinner barely made it inside, not even shutting the door fully before his foot was on the gas pedal and he was accelerating, blindly, onto the street, his heart almost entirely in his throat as it pounded out a prayer. 

“You okay?” he said as he turned the corner onto the main drag. 

“Think so,” she answered, breathless and ducking down, the sound of bullets interrupting her words. 

He was trying to lose the guy, trying to determine if any rounds had hit his tires, but he was driving too accurately at this speed for that to be the case, so he kept his foot on the gas and his eyes on the road.

“What if he catches up?” she asked. Her voice was all over the place, just like his. 

“He won’t,” Skinner said, trying his best to fake conviction and zooming onto the on-ramp towards downtown. “We just need to make it onto that plane.” He stole a glance at Scully when he hit a straight patch of highway; her face was pale as a ghost as she turned around to look through the rear window. 

“Faster!” was all he heard. 

++++++++++++++++++++ 

Doggett met them at the airport by gate twenty two at seven o’clock sharp, like they’d discussed. He noted the way their faces were some inexact combination of fear and severity, worlds away from their expressions the last he saw of them. 

They’d gotten their baggage checked and claimed their tickets at the service desk already, so when they hadn’t said anything to him by then, other than to suggest they lay low until take-off and find somewhere to hide, he said, in the most civil tone he could muster, “Either one of you care to fill me in on what’s goin’ on?” 

“Agent Scully’s being followed,” Agent Skinner said, meeting Doggett’s stare with urgency. 

To the point. He liked that about Skinner. 

“You were followed here by car?” Doggett asked. When they nodded very serious-like, sharing a look with each other, he added, “Well were you able to lose the guy?” 

The question sounded kinda dumb as he looked around and didn’t see anyone suspicious.

“I think we lost him before the exit,” Scully said. “We were far ahead by that point.” 

“You _think_?” Doggett said, his concern growing with the uncertainty on her face. “Agent Scully, we’ve gotta get you out of plain sight,” he stated before he looked over at Skinner. “You, too, if he saw you.” 

“I can hide in the bathroom until the plane comes,” Scully suggested. There was a hollow tone in her voice and Doggett couldn’t help but be reminded that the way she held herself sometimes made him tense.

“No,” Doggett said, shaking his head. “You may as well just stay here with the level of protection that’d get a person.” He looked around the airport, trying to spot someone who could locate his buddy from college. “I know a guy. Works here. Could probably get you two into a janitor closet or the Employee’s Only section of the gift shop or somethin’ while I keep lookout,” he said.

Agent Scully looked at him, studied him, like she’d been truly touched. “Thank you, Agent Doggett.” 

And it had worked. Either they’d lost the guy on their way here or he’d given up on finding them, because Doggett saw nothing out of the ordinary as he waited for the final call of their flight. He was rubbing his hands between his eyes to get out the headache that seemed to reside there before retrieving them and boarding. 

When they were on the plane, he looked over to Scully. Now that they were in the air, she was finally breathing with a little more ease, but her skin was white and paper-thin, dark purple circles outlining the area under her eyes.

“Agent Scully,” he said. “How long’s it been since you got some shut eye?” 

She looked over at him after a moment; her eyes were vacant and clouded. “Can’t remember,” she said, managing some kind of polite smile. 

“Eight hour flight,” he noted, giving a shrug. “Only one layover, and that’s not for a few hours. If you wanna rest now, I’ll stay alert.” 

She breathed in, a shyness on her face when she looked at him. “Thank you,” she said, sounding surprised.

He didn’t know how long it’d take her to realize he was, on the whole, a pretty understanding fellow. 

He smiled at her. When the turbulence settled she shut her eyes, at least trying to sleep. Whether it worked or not was out of his control. 

++++++++++++++++++++ 

Mulder ran away from the facility (and into a whole lot of nothingness) for what seemed like hours, and maybe was, because on a good day he could run about seven miles straight and he’d already had to stop twice to walk a while and let his breathing even. He’d passed a desolate lake where he’d taken in about a cup of really repulsive brownish water. But he kept moving, unsure of where he was going, what state he was even in, and lacking any degree of confidence that he wasn’t just wasting his breath and traveling towards more danger. 

He had nothing on him but the flimsy scrubs he’d stolen from some locker before he’d squeezed out the window.

He was socialized to wear clothing; what could he say? A nudist, he was not.

But he had no luck finding shoes, so the parts of his feet that hadn’t been callused over already were raw and bleeding from their abuse on the hard dirt road, piercing jolts of pain surging through him when his feet pounded blindly over stone, his eyes still trying to adapt to the outside brightness. The adjustment, dehydration, and tension he was dealing with were collaborating with commendable teamwork at forming a real winner of a headache. 

He briefly wondered if this is what Gandhi felt like -- tortured, victimized, nearly naked with no shoes -- but probably no one should compare themselves to Gandhi, what was he even thinking? And if Mulder’d been given the means and opportunity, he’d have fought back like hell, so that comparison was easily invalidated. 

The pain that came with each step, however, was the least of his concerns and was almost easy to overlook, because what propelled him further was the thought of Scully in danger, a danger for which he was responsible. He took the abuse on his feet and head as a welcome kind of punishment for allowing that to happen, for remembering what he had, for exposing her to any of this in the first place.

To make matters worse (although he couldn’t really compare his current unfortunate predicament to the one he’d just escaped), this road seemed entirely deserted and while the first of every impulse he had (beyond running like hell or high water towards imagined safety) was to call Scully, he didn’t have a phone with which to do so. 

Nor could he stop thinking about the abductees he’d left behind. 

Just when Mulder thought he’d have to stop running, or even walking (on account of he was depleting his energy and dehydrating rapidly, and death from over-exertion would kind of defeat the purpose of escaping) he saw a general store with a small house next to it about a quarter-mile further. Though wherever he was seemed secluded as all hell, there was enough foliage scattered around to rule out desert, so he could cross mirage off the list of possible mind-tricks that might be occurring when he took in the sign of life in front of him.

Well, it was worth a shot, he told himself. Maybe he’d go in and it would be a trap, but he saw no better option, so he decided to take his chances. Even though his current wardrobe and presentation wouldn’t lend themselves well to a positive first-impression and likely would incite an assault of questions he didn’t have the answers to, if he found someone inside who was unaffiliated with whatever was going on down the road, he could probably charm his way into use of a phone and maybe a few Band-Aids. 

Nervous, he remembered his mother’s attempts at assertiveness training from when he was a boy. _The worst anyone can say is ‘No,”_ she’d say. But believing _that_ was the worst anyone could do right now would be naive, all due respect to his mother, so when that little pep-talk still didn’t encourage him to walk through that door and face more potential peril, he thought of his need to hear Scully’s voice. To affirm that she was whole and breathing and safe, and tell her he was trying to come home. That desire propelled him through the entrance of the store, a ring of a bell sounding as he made his way through. 

“I didn’t hear a car pull up,” said the voice of an older female, though Mulder couldn’t pinpoint where it came from. 

He looked around; he saw things like Elmer’s glue and CornNuts littering the shelves. The store seemed to have everything from party balloons to fishing rods, all crammed into one small, well organized space. It smelled like a fishy twist of live-bait and Skittles. Despite the unpleasant contrast, Mulder’s mouth watered. He looked around for some water.

“I came the old fashioned way,” Mulder called back, his eyes traveling around the interior in an attempt to locate the sound.

A seventyish woman came out of some back room and appeared up front by a cash register, a rifle strapped over her shoulder. She stood about five feet, tops, and her grey hair was piled up messily into a bun that rested on the top of her head in a way that reminded Mulder of a dead squirrel. 

“Christ, what happened to you, Doc?” she asked, looking him up and down.

Mulder remembered that he was wearing scrubs. The conclusion she drew was as good a cover as any, so he decided to go along with it. He definitely did not want to mess with a short old lady packing a hunting rifle, although the incongruity of the image would have made him laugh under normal circumstances. 

“My car broke down a few miles down the road. I came to ask if I can use your phone.” 

“There’s a payphone around back.” She looked at him sternly, squinting, as though she was determining whether or not he was trying to play her for some fool. Her voice was scratchy, like sandpaper and cheap scotch. 

“I don’t have any money on me, Ma’am. I was-” Mulder thought about what to say, what story to tell. “-robbed,” he finished. 

(And that wasn’t totally a lie. At one point he had a wallet, then _he_ was taken, and at this moment he was not in possession of said wallet.)

“And where are your shoes?” 

Her voice reminded him of how his grandmother used to sound when he was small, scolding him for the way he used to lose everything. He half expected her to start calling him Sonny and waxing nostalgic with stories starting, _when I was your age_ … 

“I was…robbed of those, too.” Mulder said, again not quite lying, but with a partial inflection to his sentence. “Expensive sneakers. Damn shame.” He did his best to look innocent. 

“Well you’ve had a real shit day then!” She eyed him again. 

Mulder hadn’t seen his reflection, but he imagined what a sight he must be. He could feel various cuts stinging on the surface of his forehead. His arms were bruised from needle punctures and tourniquets tied too tightly. He’d just run and walked what he’d estimate (by his level of exhaustion and dehydration) to be ten miles or so, although it could have been more if one accounted for the power adrenaline might have claimed over him during such a precarious circumstance. Or less, considering the lack of nutrients in his body. Mulder could only pray she had poor eyesight, because he couldn’t fabricate answers to any of the questions that might arise about his appearance. 

“How do I know you didn’t escape from some mental ward, the way you’re dressed and all?” 

He furrowed his brow. “Is there some mental institution around here that I don’t know about?” 

He was legitimately curious. 

She paused.

“Nah. Come on, Doc. I’m just messin’ with ya. I had to make sure there’d be no funny business though. You wouldn’t believe the people that come in here.” She walked out from behind the desk, leaning her rifle against the counter. “It’s the only store for thirty miles or so, both ways.” She looked at him again, head to toe, as though by doing so she could assess his level of intelligence. “You can probably imagine. There’s a phone in my cabin next-door. Let’s get you cleaned up, son. You look like you could use a glass of water. Or five.” 

“Thank you,” he said, and he followed her back out the door and into the place adjacent. There was a decrepit porch in the front of the house, some lattice in need of a paint job, and a swing that looked dangerous to sit on. The screen door slammed behind him just as soon as he passed through.

Inside there were animal heads everywhere, mounted on the wall, lying on the floor, all with eyes wide open. Bull, deer, birds of all sorts. 

“Don’t let the heads scare ya,” she said, as they walked through what seemed to be a very deadly living room. “I’m a taxidermist. It’s only a hobby though,” she added. “Just a funny little thing I do to occupy my free time since my husband passed.” 

This didn’t comfort Mulder, but he still needed to use a goddamn phone and hopefully there wouldn’t be stuffed preserved animal remains in the kitchen, where they seemed to be heading.

No such luck.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mulder said, remembering courtesy. 

“Eh, don’t be. He was a rusty old thing as it was. I got all the good years outta him.” 

She stood on her tip-toes to reach for a glass of water in the cabinet and filled it to the brim from the tap. 

Nothing ever looked quite so appetizing.

“I’m Mildred,” she said, handing him the glass. “‘Round here folks who stop in the store call me Millie.” 

Mulder drained the water while he pondered what to say. What if he revealed his name was Fox and she got an idea in her head that a fox mounted on her wall would be nifty? What if her husband’s death was the cause of a desire to make taxidermy humans? 

These were things to think about. 

When he set his glass down on the table she filled it up again for him. “My name’s Mike,” he said. “Thanks for the water.” 

“Well,” Millie said when she handed a full glass back to him; he sipped this one slowly. “I’m gonna make you a sandwich, Dr. Mike. You’re nothing but skin and bones under that work outfit of yours.” 

“I’d appreciate that, Ma’am.” His stomach was growling just at the thought, although he tried not to contemplate what kind of meat would wind up inside. “Do you mind showing me to your phone?” 

“I ain’t showin’ you, but if you go up the stairs and take a right you can’t miss it. You’ll walk into the table if you don’t watch out.” 

“Thanks,” Mulder said, and excused himself for a minute. 

When he got up the stairs and spotted the phone (an old rotary dial), he tested to see if Millie could hear him. “Millie,” he said, in the volume he expected to use. He seemed out of her ear range. Satisfied, Mulder sat on the floor in the bedroom, wiped his forehead of a drying layer of sweat, and dialed Scully’s number. His heartbeat accelerated at the ‘what if’ of her not picking up. At the thought…

No, he couldn’t finish that sentence. Not even in his head. He just had to hear her voice.

_Pick up. Pick up. Please, Scully._

After four rings her voicemail intercepted the call and when he heard the single beat before the recorded voice he felt his entire stomach sink. He shut his eyes to the sound of his pulse pounding against his temple, the throbbing of a headache a background noise to her voice on the machine. He began to sweat once again, despite the chill that now ran through his body. 

_I’m not available to answer the phone right now, so leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you._

His brain tried to corral all of its emotions into a single space. The way the sound of her voice had the power to reactivate every nerve in his body paired with the sinking feeling that settled in at what it meant that she hadn’t picked up created a disorienting inconsistency within him. As he tried to add the feelings and determine the sum of their parts, he couldn’t get far enough past the panicked emptiness resulting from the _beep_ to solve the equation.

She hadn’t picked up.

“Hi,” he said into the voicemail, long after the sound had permitted him to speak. _God_ , his whole body shook. He didn’t know how to continue. What was his message? “Scully, it’s me. I have…” He paused again. “I think I’m safe at the moment, but not for long. There’s reason to believe someone might be…” He couldn’t say it. His lips quivered and when he blinked, a powerless wetness washed down his cheeks. His voice seemed to vibrate. “You’re in danger, Scully. Stay somewhere safe if you can. I’m going to try to come home to you as soon as I can.” 

“I’m sorry,” he said, the last thing before he hung up. When he did, the silence surrounding him felt so dead and lonely that he slammed his hand against the floor, over and over, just to hear something.

He tried her home phone. He tried Skinner’s cell phone. He tried their office.

When no one had picked up, the thoughts running through his mind set off a panic so thick his body felt like steaming water about to boil, about to evaporate into nothing. He had to tell himself to keep breathing as the sweat in his palms nearly caused the phone to slide out of his hand. 

His instinct had been to run away, to keep moving, no stops, so he knew he couldn’t stay here much longer. But the further he got away, the more he thought about the hopelessness of his position, about the people who hadn’t escaped, about those men coming after Scully. 

He knew they would be.

Because of him. 

He searched his brain for anything he could think to do to stop any of it from happening.

Focus, he told himself. Now it was his thoughts he was trying to corral all into one workable location, an incredible feat given the distracting nature of fear and love. 

He thought about deception. About the advantage that was afforded to him by the man who helped him escape. About more advantages that might have just as easily been given to him.

Conceivably. 

And he sat, fetal in the corner of that unfamiliar upstairs bedroom, until he had an idea.

And collected himself. 

“Hey Millie?” he called. His voice was still, more or less, broken, but he cleared his airways, found his vocals, and focused every ounce of energy he had on the hope that his plan might somehow work. When she didn’t answer, he made his way down the stairs so she could better hear him. He felt a jolt of pain run through his feet with every last step.

“Millie, you know that place down the street?” He pointed in the direction he came from. “I’d say about ten, maybe fifteen miles or so?” Mulder added

“That abandoned factory building? Hasn’t been in use for years!” She was cutting up what he hoped was turkey meat and placing it on a piece of bread.

He thought where he’d been. About cement walls and large, dark rooms. About electrical outlets every few feet, spaced out around the perimeter. 

“That’s the one,” he said, more hope seeping into his voice. “Is there a way to get in touch with someone at that place?”

She looked at him, her face confused. “Well. Landline numbers don’t really change ‘round here. Used to be called the Gorman Factory before it went out of business ten years back. Number for it probably’s in that old phone book by the desk.” 

“Thanks,” Mulder said, but he barely uttered the words before he was dashing up the stairs.

“There ain’t nobody there anymore!” she called back. 

“I’ll take my chances,” he said, mostly to himself, because he was out of her hearing range again. Mulder flipped through the yellow pages until he got to “G” and ran his index finger down the alphabetized listings. _Gorman_. 

He found it. 

He dialed.

With each twist of the old rotary, his pulse felt more alive inside of him, uncovering some kind of hidden clarity in its persistent fast beat. He was about to make the boldest move imaginable.


	8. I shut my eyes to the sunshine (turned my head away from the noise)

[ ](http://s1179.photobucket.com/albums/x396/adrenalin211/?action=view&current=_thb_Screenshot127-tile2.jpg)

**Chapter 8: I shut my eyes to the sunshine (turned my head away from the noise)**

Scully was drifting, her thoughts and mind fuzzy in that way that, when she startled into full awareness (sound of the co-pilot over the loudspeaker), she couldn’t say for sure whether or not she’d dozed off. 

(Half an hour until landing, the announcement said, so she must have.)

She prepared herself for a transfer, another plane ride. 

A flight attendant wheeled a cart by: salted peanuts, dirtied silverware, and empty coffee cups littering trays. She caught the scent of the coffee and stopped the attendant with her arm before the woman disappeared down the aisle. 

“May I have a cup please?” she asked, her voice low and bleary. (She could use about five cups, really, but the research on caffeine during pregnancy was conclusive. Small amounts. AKA, she’d had better get used to feeling constantly groggy.) 

The woman smiled, filling up a mug. Scully could taste it before she sipped it. 

Maybe it was their chosen brand, but whatever it was, the specific blend triggered her memory. 

(Years ago, early on in their partnership. A plane ride much like this one.)

_“Scully, we’ve spent two years together now, and I’ve only recently taken note of how you like your coffee.”_

_He sat in the seat adjacent, sacrificing the window-view for her._

_“How do I like my coffee, Mulder?” she tested._

_“Black and lifeless. Two shots of skepticism. No cream.”_

_(He was mad at her for daring to be reluctant about flying out to investigate this case: Giant Kangaroo Man Gives Birth To Baby Koala, the headline read.)_

_She rolled her eyes. “But how do I really take my coffee?”_

_He popped a few airline peanuts into his mouth, chewing as he thought. “I see, Scully. You don’t believe me. When the stewardess comes around again, I’ll prepare it for you. How’s that?”_

_She accepted his challenge, daring him to get it wrong._

_He didn’t._

_It was exactly right. He even stirred it for her, smiling coyly._

_“I can’t help but notice that you’re more relaxed on planes now,” he observed a few minutes later. Mulder offered her some peanuts by holding the bag out and raising an eyebrow; she declined._

_“When you make a living by flying around the world because of ridiculous captions in far from reputable newspapers, you get used to it,” she replied, sarcastic, sipping her coffee appreciatively, so as not to be too harsh._

_He smiled at her, offering amends by placing his complimentary mint into her cup-holder._

Scully closed her eyes to the memory. When she opened them she bit back despair at the emptiness of the seat to her left.

She hadn’t wanted to mention, at the time, that her comfort in the air was largely related to his presence beside her. Today, on one of the first flights she’d flown without him, she could feel the anxiety rising like flood water. 

She put it on the list of things to tell him, should she find him. 

She would. She _would_ find him, she told herself. 

Scully swilled her coffee and waited for land.

++++++++++++++++++++

He focused, closing his eyes. Mulder tried not to let the fact that his heart was beating a mile a minute be heard in the pace of his breathing or the timbre of his voice. 

“State your purpose,” a man said, low and throaty. 

Mulder summoned up all the smart-ass within him. He’d need all of that and more for what he was about to do.

“With such a friendly greeting, I’m at a loss for how to proceed with this conversation,” Mulder said. The man didn’t respond. “I’ll start by saying that this is Fox Mulder and I’d like to speak with your boss.” 

Half a minute passed. 

(There was a clock in the hallway. Mulder stared at the second hand, counting, trying to solidify his plan. Trying to anticipate all possible responses.)

“Agent Mulder,” a voice said. It was a familiar voice. The one he expected to hear. Mulder could feel the cloud of cigarette smoke in the air around his phone without needing to smell or see it. 

“They always put me through to you if I say all the right things,” Mulder started. “Who knew in this case all I’d need to do was introduce myself?” 

“Agent Mulder, to what do I owe this call?” The bastard’s voice was smooth and calm. If he was surprised to hear Mulder on the phone, he didn’t allow the emotion into his tone. 

“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that I’m supposed to be in one of those metal chairs of yours right now, yet here we are talking on the phone like old buds? How long did it take for them to realize? I bet you only recently discovered my absence.” There was silence on the other end. “You _did!_ ” Mulder exclaimed, trying to summon glee into his tone. “Well in that case, I guess I could have waited a little longer. Gotten even further away.” 

“I haven’t any idea what you’re talking about.” 

Mulder heard a wheeze interrupt his crackly sentence. 

He knew he had to keep this short. Lessen the chance they could get a trace on him. He had a couple of minutes, if that. 

“Maybe I can explain it to you,” he said. “Would you like that?” 

“If you insist.” 

“You’re probably trying to keep me on the line now. Get a location, but I’ll tell you right now that’ll do you no good. How do you imagine I got away?” Mulder asked, and it was rhetorical, of course, but he let the moment hang for a few seconds. “I had help, which I’m sure you’ve gathered. You don’t suppose whoever helped me would have let me off on my own in the middle of nowhere without one of your very own high-tech cell phones to use, do you? Amidst the list of contacts I handily find this number?” Mulder left another pause, hoping his tone gave off an air of conviction. “And I mean. He’d have to have motive to help me, right? He wouldn’t just have, you know, done it for no reason. And not also supplied me with all the evidence I’ll ever need to bury you.” 

“You’re bluffing.” 

“Oh, if only. But either way, I have the numbers for every news outlet in the northern hemisphere right next to me,” he lied. “You can’t take the chance that I’m not, so you’ll do what I tell you to do or I expose your project and your agenda.”

He was pulling at straws here, making guesses based on what he’d seen in the experimentation room, the few things he’d overheard. He wished like hell he had more trust in his powers of analytical deduction right now, but at the very least he could _sound_ sure of himself. 

There was a brief pause on the other end. 

“Agent Mulder, posit I knew what you were referring to. Who has ever believed the stories you’ve dreamed up?”

Mulder was quick with an answer. He knew he had to be. 

“Seeing is believing. No one will question my credibility when they see what I have.” 

“What is it, exactly, that you have?” 

“You’d like it if I told you that, wouldn’t you?” he said. “Here’s how it works. If you lay a single hand on Scully, I release the information. If you don’t end everything you’re doing in that warehouse _and_ free my fellow kidnap victims, I release the information. If you piss me off and lie to me in any way, I… well you must be sensing a pattern by now, right?” 

“Now hold on,” he said, his words staggering, maybe a bit of fear slipping between the consonants. “Let’s not be rash here.” Mulder heard him plead through a wheeze. “There’s much to talk about.” 

“I don’t make deals with the devil. You heard what will happen. That’s all I have to say.” 

Mulder impressed himself with his own audacity when he hung up, leaving it at that. 

The sound of the surrounding silence sent a stomach-twisting combination of terror and pride through his body. Terror because optimism wasn’t exactly his most prominent thought right now. Pride, because, whether any of this worked or not, he’d be damned if he was about to go down without a fight, even if it sucked every last ounce of his energy dry. 

He closed his eyes, trying to process what he’d just done and what his next move would be. He searched within himself for the kind of faith Scully brought with her everywhere, feeling only empty pockets of black despondence in the areas she’d otherwise fill. He imagined her by his side, wondered what she’d say. 

++++++++++++++++++++

If it were your main goal in life to be elusive — to hide truths, conspiracies, and most importantly yourself — you would fail at this very moment. 

Sweat rose to the surface of your forehead in small beads. You had forgotten all about cool, calm and collected; it’d been replaced by an inability to think of anything beyond the rapid pound of your heart and the ringing in your ears. 

“Did you get a trace?” you managed to ask, having to force the words out like the remnants of an empty tube of toothpaste. 

But you knew, in a dark pocket of your consciousness, not to trust the answer that was given. How would you know who around you was reliable? You could be given the wrong location, sent on a wild goose chase to find Mulder. You could be misled and told a trace couldn’t be pinpointed. There were any number of misleading words that could be said to you and you had no way of discerning their place in fiction or nonfiction. 

“We don’t know yet,” said an intern and a paranoia ripped through your soul. Was this the traitor who allowed Mulder to escape? “The signal keeps fading in and out,” the intern continued. “Either we’re dealing with an ancient phone line here, or Mulder has one of our untraceable cells. We’ll know if we can get a location in about ten minutes.”

Did that even make sense? You had no idea. You couldn’t trust it. You chastised yourself for your reliance on others for technological expertise. 

You were the only one you could trust. 

“We don’t _have_ ten minutes,” you snapped. “We don’t have _five_ minutes.” 

Your tone was cutting. 

Your wheezing grew heavier.

You felt a pressure, surging pain in chest. 

If time were not of the essence, there would be options. Options that ran through your mind regardless, a hopeless naïveté rearing its ugly head. Options you’d never be able to pursue. 

-Initiate an internal investigation. 

-Review surveillance of the experimentation room. 

-Uncover the traitor(s) among you.

-Search the premises for anything that might be missing.

-Find out if Mulder is bluffing. 

Yet any of these options would take hours, or days, even, depending on how deep the disloyalty ran. The only prevalent image in your head was of Mulder on the phone, dialing in the truths he’d discovered with a smirk on his face and a profound satisfaction breezing through him. It provoked a disturbance so immense you noticed that your hands were shaking. 

Then, you pictured a sea of reporters and naïve cops storming beyond the barricade a short time from now (you estimated maybe four hours. Five or six, at most). However long it took Mulder’s conceivable connections to get to Nevada. 

You had no choice. Worry ratcheted through you, making your jaw twitch in pain with the thought of what you were about to do. What you knew you had to do. 

“Sir?” the intern said, waiting on orders. 

“We’ll evacuate within a half an hour,” you said. It was getting harder to breathe. “Take the computers and data in the trucks. Leave everything else. Activate an explosive to go off in no less than four hours.”

The intern looked down at you in your wheelchair, a jaded and accusatory expression on his face. “And the subjects?” 

“They’re no longer a risk to us. We’ve erased the threat they pose. Did you forget the purpose of this project already?” you muttered, cold and angry, though the words felt swollen on your tongue. 

Or maybe it was your tongue that was swollen. Everything went dizzy. 

“Leave them with the bomb?” There was judgment written all over his smug excuse for a face, which you’d have cared about if you could inhale air or think properly. Sweat soaked through your shirt. You tried your best to focus.

“Unbind them,” you managed, panting, your words taking a long time to escape your mouth. “If they don’t wake up… by the time it…. detonates, I imagine it will be a… quite painless death.” You gasped for air as your intern bent down, clearly realizing the distress you wanted so much to hide. 

A heavy, cramping pain pierced your left arm, confirming the suspicion you dared not even think until this point of dependency. A fog hovered above you. Heart attack. 

You were having a heart attack. 

“Get the doctor!” the intern shouted. He leaned forward when you motioned for him to draw closer, placing his ear directly in front of your mouth. 

You could only manage a faint whisper now. “Scully,” you said. “You have to cancel the hit on Scully, or…” 

The colors swirled, nothing in focus. 

The last thing you saw were people flooding into the room, making you feel even more congested and on display. A bug under a telescope. You shut your eyes. 

The last thing you heard was a frantic voice. Strughold’s, maybe. “Stand back,” he said. 

The last thing you thought was whether or not there was truth to what people said about the foreshadowing nature of dreams. 

Mulder standing over the decaying cadaver that was your body, laughing.

++++++++++++++++++++ 

Mulder had just come back down the stairs and was trying his best to pull it together. He concentrated on his steps, one foot then the other, as he walked towards the kitchen. Piercing pain rocketed through his soles, the kind that sent random nerves in the rest of his body on alert. 

Good distraction. 

“What’s all this funny stuff you’re doing?” Millie said as she set the sandwich on the table and motioned for him to sit down. Her expression said that nonsense wouldn’t be tolerated here. “What business have you got with that old factory?”

Mulder swallowed. He had no clue whether or not he had been convincing enough over the phone and was looking to leave right away. To keep moving. That was probably his only hope.

“I hate to eat and run, Millie, but I have to go,” he said, dismissing her question. When she gave him the same stare his grandmother used to give when he did something wrong, he added, “I haven’t been completely honest with you, but I really do have to go.” 

“Now you sit down,” she said. Mulder sat, obedient. He was feeling dizzy anyway. “I’m no fool. I know you’re no doctor. Look at you with the cuts and bruises all over.” She sat down in the other chair and pushed herself in with her hands; her legs probably didn’t touch the floor. “I let you in my home because you looked glum and pathetic and in some kind of trouble and you’ve got an honest face. Don’t mean I believed you, just because you’ve got a good face. But I gave you water and a damn good sandwich and you owe me more of an explanation than ‘I have to go,’” she said all in one breath, attempting to lose her accent on that last portion, likely trying to sound like Mulder, but only succeeding in sounding…British. Regal. 

Mulder tried to manage a smile for her. The woman had a point, and she had been more than hospitable, but he was feeling the pressure of time running out, an hourglass cut in the middle. He had to get out of here. But he inhaled deeply and let out his breath, slow, trying to think of the best way to summarize.

“I’m an agent with the FBI.” He took a sip of water and cleared his throat, deciding to tell it to her straight. She didn’t seem very keen on bullshit. “There’s some illegal business going on at that factory. I’m undercover, in a sense. Not officially. Or…intentionally. But I phoned them and they might have traced my location, especially if they didn’t believe the bullshit I just tried to sell. They might be coming for me,” Mulder stated, clear and direct, looking at her in afterthought. She was nodding like none of this came as a surprise to her, like she’d seen too many John Wayne movies to be riled by anything. “Actually, I should get you out of here, too,” Mulder finished. 

His stomach seemed to be so depleted of nutrients that his appetite returned, despite the hunger suppressing nature of every thought in his head. He picked up his sandwich and took a bite. It tasted… like turkey. Good. _Thank God_.

“Nobody scares me away from my home,” Millie stated, shaking her head. “Besides, ain’t nobody gonna get a trace on _that_ phone.” 

“Oh?” Mulder said, a bite of sandwich in his mouth. If they couldn’t trace her phone there might be a possibility that the cigarette smoking son of a bitch had bought his lie. 

“Nope. Not a chance.” Millie furrowed her brows. “A while back this old perv who lives just off this main road was hackin’ into my phone calls, chokin’ his chicken to the sound of my voice!” 

Mulder had to bite back a laugh at the way she said that so plainly. Like it were such an ordinary occurrence, no big deal. 

“I know it sounds freakish, but we’ve got all types of wackos who live over on the lake, but like I just said, I don’t let anyone scare me away from home.” She shook her head again, emphasis. “Anyway I had the sheriffs come up here and install whatever gizmits and gadgets they use on the telephone pole outside. Scramblers, I think they said. Something that blocks that sorta shit from workin’.” 

“That’s mighty convenient,” Mulder said, trying to adapt to her language. He took another bite of the sandwich, his stomach so empty that he felt the food descending. 

“Sure is!” she said. “Always admired those techie types. Wouldn’t have a clue how to figure that crap out on my own.” 

Mulder’s memory flashed to the letters he’d left Scully. And to three men who might know where she was, if she’d been using their help in her investigation. Deciphering those letters.

Why the hell hadn’t he thought of that sooner? _Shit_. Scully wasn’t accustomed to seeking their help on her own, no, but in this situation it was much more than plausible. 

“Millie, you’re a genius,” Mulder said as he chewed.

“I’ve been sayin’ that for years,” she said. “‘Bout time somebody believed me.” 

“May I use your phone again?” he asked, courtesy in his words but not in his behavior. He was up from his chair and headed in the direction of the upstairs before she could answer.

“I was bein’ understandin’ before,” she called up to him. “On account of you having been robbed and all. Now that I know that ain’t true I’m gonna have to ask for reimbursement for anything long distance,” she yelled. 

He ignored the pain in his feet as he ascended the stairs, a new hope to locate Scully overcoming all else. 

And maybe, if it were true that the line was protected, he’d have a few hours to work with here. 

“You got it, Mill,” he called, loud enough so she could hear him from all the way upstairs. He was already dialing.

“Who’s speaking?” said a crackly male voice. 

He recognized it immediately and let himself cling to the familiarity of something, just for a second. 

“Frohike, it’s Mulder.” 

“MULDER?” he said. “Oh Mylanta! We’ve been looking for you!” There was excitement in his voice and he’d said Mulder’s name so loudly that Mulder could envision the other two, huddling around the speaker phone in that dingy workspace they shared. 

Sure enough, they all greeted him.

“I’ve got a lot to tell you guys, but right now I can’t get into it. I haven’t gotten in touch with Scully. Is she okay?” 

Langley’s voice rang through the receiver. “She on a plane to go find you! Left first thing this morning!” 

Mulder closed his eyes, allowing that to sink in. 

Unless someone had made it onto that plane with her, she was still okay. 

“Information on that chip you left her led us to Nevada. Is that where you are?” Byers asked, hope in his voice. 

Mulder held his hand over the receiver and yelled down the stairs. “Hey, Millie?” he called. “Whereabouts in Nevada are we?” he asked, testing. 

“Lanford,” she called back up.

“Well I guess I _am_ in Nevada,” Mulder said through a smirk, providing an answer. He had newfound energy in light of the fact that all was not lost. Scully was on a plane. “When is she scheduled to land?” 

The thought of seeing her…

“Around four o’clock at Carson airport.” 

He looked at his watch. That was a few hours from now. 

“I don’t know how far that is, but I’m gonna try to meet her. I’ll find a car or something. I met a woman who probably has the connections to make that happen.”

“Oh, really?” Frohike asked, innuendo in his tone. “Care to connect her with _me?_? Hook a brother up?” 

“Easy there, Casanova. She’s not your type,” Mulder said, now smiling, utter optimism surfacing. “I need a favor.” 

“Anything,” Frohike replied.

“I won’t have access to a cell phone. I don’t know if I’ll make it there before her, so will you call her around the time she lands? Let her know not to go to where she thinks I am?” 

“Sure thing, my man,” Langley said. 

“I hate to be bearer of bad news,” Byers chimed in, “but if the radar signals I was trying to read earlier are any indication of the technological sophistication of where you are, I wouldn’t count on Agent Scully having much cell phone service. It’s as though they’re trapped in 1990!” he exclaimed, sounding horrified. Mulder winced at this news, hoping like hell he wasn’t too far from the airport. “If you don’t get there by the time she lands, I’d advise driving to where she’s headed.” 

“Oh that’s a brilliant idea, Einstein,” Langley said to Byers. “Like Mulder wants to go back to where they were keeping him.”

“Knock it off, you two,” Frohike interjected. 

“Listen, hombres,” Mulder said. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get to Scully, but I’ve gotta go if I’m gonna have any chance.” 

“Good luck, brother,” Langley said. “If it eases your mind at all, she’s with Skinner and Agent Doggett.” 

“Agent Doggett?” Mulder wondered aloud.

“They hired this real by-the-book fellow to assist in the investigation surrounding your disappearance,” Byers informed.

“Is there good reason to trust him?”

“He’s been helpful so far. Seems to be on our team, though reluctant to believe,” Frohike pointed out. “You know how I feel about trust though.”

“I hear you.” 

“Hey, Mulder?” Frohike said.

“Yeah?” 

“It’s good to have you back.” 

“Likewise.” He smiled. “Oh, one last thing?” 

“What’s that?” said Byers.

“Are you able to trace this number?” 

“Actually, it’s funny you ask,” Frohike said. “You rang in as unidentified. We almost didn’t pick up. If you weren’t missing-” 

“-So you can’t get a location?” 

“Not with our state-of-the-art-equipment,” Langley said, cocky laughter running through his words. “And if we can’t, it’s a safe bet that nobody can.” 

“Thanks,” Mulder said. “I’ll catch you guys later.” 

“Hasta Luego,” Frohike said before he hung up. 

The sound of the dial tone, then the silence when he disconnected, didn’t feel as dissonant and oppressive as it had the time before. Mulder considered the lie he’d told, all that might be occurring right now in light of it. He realized, thankfully, that the precaution resulting from Millie’s perverted and salami-slapping neighbor had provided him with an anonymous plausibility that just might give him an edge.

He had to hope.

++++++++++++++++++++

“Millie, I need to borrow a car,” he said, coming down the stairs, exuberance in his voice and steps. 

“Like hell you’re gonna borrow a car without tellin’ me where you’re goin’ and what you’re doin’ with it.” She sounded disgruntled but her face was less serious.

“Mill, come on,” he said, whiney. He made a move to touch her shoulder when he got to the bottom of the stairs but she swatted him away with a slap on the wrist. “I thought you and I were developing a fine don’t-ask-don’t-tell relationship.” When she didn’t budge, he went to plan B. “I’m a federal officer. I _could_ mandate use of your vehicle if I had to.” 

“You’re a federal officer, all right. With no badge, no gun. No…” she looked down. “…shoes.” She put her hands on her hips and stared up at him. “You’d better start talkin’ or we’ll be standing here all day, gettin’ nowhere.” 

He let out a sigh.

“My partner is going to land at the airport. She’s on her way to come find me, but if she winds up at that factory, where she thinks _I_ am, it’ll put her in more danger than she’s in already. So I have to try to be there when she lands.” 

“Ah, why didn’t you say so! I’m a sucker for a love story.” 

“It’s not a—” Mulder paused, rethinking. “Can I just borrow your car?” 

“How do you expect to find the airport?” she asked, stubborn. “Where do you expect to get money for gas? That old clunker out back’s gonna run out of fuel in twenty miles or so.” She squinted at him and shook her head back and forth. “You men don’t think beyond two steps in front of ya. There’s a flaw in your plan and the flaw is not decidin’ to take me with you.” 

“Millie—”

“Oh, come on!”

Two minutes later, she’d given him her dead husband’s shoes, packed some water bottles, rifles, and Cheetos, closed up shop, and they were both sitting in the front seat, Mulder rolling his eyes. 

“Carson airport is about an hour from here,” she said to him. He began to anticipate seeing Scully. An hour would definitely put him there in time to keep her safe. “Just take a left outta the driveway and head straight down this dirt road ‘til you get to the intersection.” 

“A left?” Mulder asked. 

“That’s what I said. It’s the opposite of right. You’ve heard of it?” 

“No, I mean. Left brings us back past the factory. That’s exactly where I’m trying to stop Scully from going. If they see me pass by…” He paused, not knowing how to finish that sentence.

“Look, left is the only option, ‘less you wanna drive all the way ’round the lake on this terrain. It’d tag about three more hours to that time. You won’t even catch the highway in that direction without going eighty or so miles outta your way first.” 

Mulder turned the key in the ignition. The beat up Chevrolet sputtered until the engine fired up. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, looking in both directions. 

If they’d bought his lie, they’d likely be leaving now. Seeing them on the road would be admitting his bluff, erasing any headway he might have gained. 

If they hadn’t believed him… 

Well, then they’d be coming for him from that direction.

(But Scully. _God,_ Scully. Would he be able to get to her in time if he listened to the voice of reason?)

He was at a crossroads like this with her once. He heard her voice, delicate and soft in his head.

 _I don’t know why. I think they went right,_ she’d said.

Scully had wanted him to go right. 

_Five years together, Scully. How many times have I been wrong? Never!_

He’d been wrong about this whole thing, though. About everything he ever believed with certainty. He didn’t have the answers, but he sure as hell would bet more on Scully’s gut instinct than his own right now.

“It’s up to you, Doc,” Millie said, snapping him out of his thoughts. “I’m just in it for the adventure!” 

“How fast does this thing go?” he asked, cocking the wheel to the right and slamming on the gas pedal. “Think we can cut that second estimate by, say, an hour?” 

The sudden acceleration flung Millie back into her seat. “Woohoo!” she shouted, laughing. “I guess we’ll find out.”


	9. Breach man's mind

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* * *

**Chapter 9: Breach man's mind**

John Doggett wasn’t even that tall a man, but his knees hit against Agent Scully’s passenger side seat when he sat down in the back of the rental sedan. He brought his right hand up to massage the stiffness in the back of his neck.

This wasn’t something that often happened in New York, flights landing early. No line at the rental car place. The whole area seemed foreign to him. 

Dirt roads, meadows, and open space. It wasn’t as though he’d never seen the country before, but this was…different. 

Skinner drove, taking a quick glance at Scully every now and then. Since they re-boarded in Dallas, she looked a little less tired and a little more pale. Overall, not good. Doggett was worried, too, and if he thought there was room for his concerns, he’d have offered them. 

She stared ahead, looking out the window every now and then. Sometimes, he could hear the inhale and concentrated exhale of her breathing from the back seat. When she did this, he noticed that Skinner clutched the wheel a little tighter and kept his focus on the road. 

“How long until we reach those coordinates?” she asked.

“Thirty five minutes from here. That’s what the maps said,” Skinner answered. 

“When you can pass that truck in front of us, do it please,” she said. 

“Was planning on it.” 

Doggett offered her a granola bar early on in the ride, a chocolate chip Chewy with peanut butter chunks of some sort. She accepted, but stared at it for a few minutes before deciding to eat it. 

He sat quietly for several minutes, taking in the scattered, budding trees before he took out his phone. In the window of time that hung between now and their arrival, he’d been planning to call Frohike or Langley or the other one, see if they found anything else on that chip, but his phone wasn’t reading any bars.

“I’m not gettin’ any reception,” he said, breaking the silence and looking into the front seat. “Either of you?”

Agent Scully met his eyes in the rear-view mirror, a look on her face like she’d almost forgotten he was there. They were hollow green, maybe hopeful. He didn’t know, exactly, what he was reading in them. She pulled out her phone, looked down, and shook her head. 

“No,” Skinner said as he cleared his throat. “Hopeless out here.” 

In the deafening silence that settled in the car, he wondered if it was Agent Scully’s heartbeat he could hear over the smooth rotation of the tires, rolling over dirt and pebble. 

++++++++++++++++++++

Mulder dashed into the airport, two minutes past five. Various bones and muscles throbbed out in disapproval at his speed, but he didn’t have the concentration to register their protests.

When he checked the arrivals board the enthusiasm that had been keeping his metaphorical batteries charged seemed to drain of its energy reserves. 

3:46

There was a scrolling marquee that announced: **Ahead of schedule!** in cheerful, bold lettering.

He suppressed any show of anger, panic now taking the place of the anticipation he’d been feeling just seconds ago at the thought of seeing her face. Touching her skin.

But there wasn’t time to entertain ‘if onlys’, so he ran back to the car. 

_Just great_ , he wanted to yell out loud. _JUST GREAT_ that he’d somehow managed to turn a four hour drive into three only to find out that Scully was still about fifteen minutes ahead of him, and likely moving further towards danger with every second. Time seemed to shrivel, the air sucked right out of it like one of those space-saver vacuum bags.

“ _Shit,_ ” he said, entering the car, figuring Millie to be as good a recipient as any of his frustration. 

She leaned towards the driver’s seat to turn the key in the ignition, starting up the Chevy yet again. “We missed it.” She didn’t say it like a question. 

Mulder nodded and buckled his seatbelt, ready to book it the hell out of there. “Guess we’ll be driving a giant circle,” he said. His hands began to sweat. He tried not to think of what could happen if he couldn’t, somehow, catch up to Scully. He was unsuccessful, unable to find the off button in his brain, the one that stopped horrific potentials from entering his awareness. 

He’d told Millie the gist of the story on the car ride here, at least what he knew of it. She’d listened and nodded for the duration, like she was playing an important supporting role in _The Greatest Story Ever Told._ In general, she seemed to treat life like the arc of a piece of fiction: outlining antagonists, protagonists and conflict, every aspect of what he told her fitting into some chapter in the whole of a story. The ease with which she absorbed and accepted all this improbable information likely meant she was a bit whacked in the head, but after not talking to anyone for weeks, being forced in and out of consciousness, and spending most of his coherent time feeling like there was a kid playing Mr. Potato Head with the various components of his cerebrum, it was nice to have someone who just listened. 

“You wanna remind me again why it is you haven’t just called the cops?” she asked, disrupting his thoughts. “A siren would be helpful right about now.” 

“Part of the deal,” Mulder said. “I told him I wouldn’t out him if he did the things I asked. If the cops showed up he’d know I was bluffing. There’s something in it for me that he’d know I’m not willing to sacrifice by bringing the cops into this.” 

“What’s that?”

He clenched his jaw. “Scully’s safety.” 

“AHA, so this _is_ a love story,” she said, taking out a water bottle and popping up the cap with her teeth. “I knew it. You’ve got sick puppy written all over your cut-up face.” She crinkled open a bag of Cheetos and shoved one into her mouth, the crunch a stiff background noise to the thoughts in his head.

“I’m the reason she’s in danger.” When the words slipped from his lips and into the atmosphere he felt a chill stinging him from the inside out, migrating from his ankles all the way to his neck, the hair on his arms raising.

“And don’t you think if this bad guy’s got half a brain on him he’s fled by now? And done all them things you wanted?” 

Mulder hoped like hell that this was case. 

“If he believed my threats held water? Maybe. The man we’re dealing with is not predictable.” 

“You’re a decent liar,” she said, shrugging. 

“Yeah?”

“I believed you when you said your name was Mike.” 

“Really? Thanks, Mill. I’m flattered.” He said it sarcastically, but it was the truth. Though he was too overcome by circumstance to process small talk, he couldn’t begin to understand why he was telling her all this. 

She gave him directions leading back to the factory, at which point he realized that it really _was_ a giant, unsophisticated circle they were covering. Mulder sucked in stifling air, feeling one with the road after every bump (and there were plenty) that they drove over.

Millie broke the silence about twenty minutes later. They were getting close. He could feel Scully’s presence, but maybe that was all in his head. 

“Earlier you said you don’t trust people,” she stated, pensive. “Why am I here then?”

Mulder paused before answering, not wanting to be honest, but knowing she wouldn’t settle for anything else. “I needed your car.” he said and when she frowned he added, “The company’s not bad either, and this way I can keep my eye on you.” 

At that, she grinned, licking bright orange Cheetos cheese off of her wrinkly fingers. “I was pretty damn persistent, too!” 

Mulder tried to let the smile permeate so as not to descend into an abyss of despondence. Ten minutes to go, and he was preparing himself for anything. Beyond Scully, he didn’t know what he hoped to find upon his return, only what he didn’t, only the fears that made him feel as though he were rotting. 

He was thankful for the road and its distraction, because if he didn’t have to drive, he shivered to think of what he’d see if he succumbed to the temptation to shut his eyes. 

Her voice would forever be a record in his head; he’d wear out the vinyl if he never got to hear it in real time again.

_We just keep driving. Don't you ever just want to stop? Get out of the damn car? Settle down and live something approaching a normal life?_

He finally understood what Scully had grasped long ago. 

_Yes,_ he said to himself, hoping that acknowledging his current understanding would give him a shot at a second chance.

_Yes._

++++++++++++++++++++

According to the calculations they were not even a quarter of a mile away (anxious, shaking hands) when she spotted a barricade made of police cruisers in the middle of the road. City cars, Scully observed. Not the local sheriff vehicles. 

Skinner pulled over, stopping so abruptly that his wheels sent a cloud of dirt into the air, which Scully noticed when she got out of the car, her legs wobbling slightly before they readjusted to movement. 

She felt her heart, a loud snare stammering out a complex pattern inside her chest. Frantic, barely predictable beats. 

She watched as several officers approached them, aware that she was walking towards them as well, though she hadn’t remembered commanding her body to move. 

“What’s going on here?” Skinner asked, flashing his badge. She and Doggett supplied theirs as well. The officer squinted at them for a moment before he looked back at what appeared to be a run-down building in the distance. 

The whole area was blocked off. There was a swarm of cops and firemen congregating a few yards further behind, one of whom came forward to join who she assumed was his partner. 

“We got an anonymous tip,” the first officer said. “The man who phoned in said there was a bomb about to go off. That there were people sleeping inside that had to be saved.” He was motioning to the building behind him. 

The other one nodded. “We got here a half an hour ago, and turns out it’s the real deal. Found a bomb in there. A bunch of people inside were knocked out. Not restrained, but they certainly wouldn’t have woken up.” The officer placed his hands on his hips. 

Scully’s eyes blurred. 

“Weirdest call I’ve ever responded to,” the other added. “Just being in there gave me the creeps.” 

She tried to absorb the information, but one question broke through with a force so ruthless she couldn’t think beyond it, a query that put all cognitive abilities on hold. 

“Who?” Scully said, her voice an eager, foreign sound. “Who was in there? Do you have a list?” 

The officer handed her a clipboard containing scribbled down names. She could feel her hope rising to the surface, forming goosebumps on her skin, and causing her fingers to quake. 

“We bussed them down to the nearest hospital for treatment,” Scully heard one cop say as she tried to read. “They looked physically okay. But damn if most of them weren’t almost…catatonic.” 

Sixteen or so names on the list. Some of them Scully recognized. Teresa Hoese. Billy Miles. 

“He’s not on here,” she whispered. Then louder, when she noticed Skinner leaning in to hear her. “He’s not on the list.” The second time she said it she absorbed the full weight of the words. Her throat felt tight. 

“Has the bomb been defused?” Skinner asked. Upon seeing the officer’s head shake, shameful, Skinner said, “Well how long until it goes off?” 

Every noise around her seemed muffled, her mind spinning. She felt saliva coat the inside of her mouth, the telltale sign of nausea rising. She tried to breathe, feeling as though the eyes of everyone in the world were on here, which she knew couldn’t be true. 

“The specialist in our department estimated about a half an hour. That was…” He looked at his watch. “….About twenty five minutes ago. We don’t know for sure though. It’s time-triggered but there’s no fancy countdown or something like on TV.” His voice sounded as though it were under water, murky anxiousness pouring down. 

“Bomb squad’s on their way, but they’re coming in from the city, so it’s a safe bet they won’t make it in time. We got the whole building evacuated though,” his partner added. 

She heard the words, barely registering their meaning, and began to move forward. Only a thin strip of yellow tape and several hundred yards of earth separated her and that building. 

She wasn’t thinking. 

She was reacting. 

“Scully,” Skinner said. She could feel him reading her, knowing what she wanted (desperately) to do. “Scully,” he repeated, now a yell.

She kept moving forward, now faster, her mind not catching up to her body. She was about to lift the strand of cautionary yellow when she felt Skinner steps closing in on her, her wrist being pulled back. 

“You can’t,” he said. 

“He’s here,” she said, her voice louder and shakier than she expected. “I can feel it. He’s here.” She sounded hysterical now. Everything she didn’t want to occur was happening and all at once and she could all but stop the tears from breaking through a thinning shell of public concealment. 

“He’s not in there. There’s nothing in there but a bomb” His voice was soft. Certain. 

“I need to see that that’s true,” she yelled, insistent. She tried to free herself from his hold on her wrist, her body moving towards the building without her hand. 

His fingers were a cold reality. 

“You need to stay alive for when we find Mulder,” he said, sharp and urgent now, unrelenting.

 _Alive._

Those words sparked her consciousness like the electric shock of a million truths and suddenly she was hyperconscious, remembering why it mattered to stay alive if he weren’t, remembering why ‘meaningless’ was no longer the first word she thought of when she pondered life without him.

She looked back at the building, the only choice clear in her mind, though it retriggered the nausea to consider it. 

“MULDER,” she shouted, his name spinning off her tongue, loud shrill.

(He’d come out. He’d come out if he heard. If she shouted, over and over, he’d come.)

Then, a loud blast of orange and black broke through the evening. She stared for several seconds, heart in her throat, until the tears came freely, her eyes betraying her external walls. 

The building was a ball of flame in the distance, a blinding contrast to the dimness that overcame her. She looked down to discover her arms trembling.

Scully’s mouth was watery again, her stomach heaving up its protest as her knees gave way and she sank into the dead grass, vomiting up the contents she’d forced into her stomach earlier. 

She tasted salt and air, heard people moving in on her. She felt outside of herself, present in this moment only as some kind of observer.

“Agent Scully, are you all right?” (Agent Doggett.) 

“Scully.” (Skinner, urgent. Enthusiastic?) 

Then the voice of someone else who was leaning down beside her, whispering her name as he joined her on the ground, the familiarity of which she processed physically before mentally, her body seeming to know its source and slant towards it. 

“That happy to see me, Scully?” She turned towards the sound; he was grinning at her while he rubbed her back. The look that overcame his features liberated her from all feeling of disbelief.

A half laugh, wipe of her face, and his name slipping through her lips before she leaned further into his touch. 

“Mulder.” 

++++++++++++++++++++

He found it difficult to process anything beyond the glisten of her eyes as her fingers traced the cuts on his forehead. The delicate sting of her touch awoke his natural, though locked away, need for human contact. He felt his eyes traveling all over her, making sure she was _there_ , running his hands down her arm as he helped her to stand. 

After dreaming of this moment, he hadn’t planned for the hardest part to be absorbing the reality of her presence.

His peripheral surroundings blurred, their colors distorted as though focus and clarity were only necessary when it came to _her_. She was touching his cheek, so gentle, turning around, her eyes reflecting off a cloud of smoky black and grey. “I thought you were in there. I thought…” 

The weight of her voice stung him. He tucked a piece of disheveled hair behind her ear and brought her closer to his chest. 

“I know,” he whispered into her hair. He held her head there, secure, strands of red against his fingers. He felt wetness seep through the thin layer of cotton that resided between her eyes and his heart. “I know,” he repeated through the heaviness forming in his throat.

Her grip around him tightened, fingers clutching the material of his and pressing into his back muscles. “It’s okay. I’m okay,” he whispered to her, sensing quiet desperation and fear in the harsh suffocation of her grip and the low hum of her lips breathing, gasping against his chest. He could tell she was trying to pull herself together. He tried to do the same. For her. He tried. “Are _you_ okay?” he asked, stopping all movement until he felt her nod against him. 

He bit down on his lip, his heart beating out erratic relief, finding himself breathless. 

She calmed down after a few more seconds there, readjusting to her surroundings and clearing her throat. When his hands stopped shaking he settled for holding hers inside of his, releasing the rest of her from his contact, and acknowledging Skinner with a nod of his head. 

He could see all the questions written in the lines on her face and the way she held her eyebrows — _hows_ and _wheres_ and _whos_. For now, she seemed to settle for standing inches from him, her grip on his hand strong as she allowed the others in.

Inhale, exhale. He gave himself of crash course in Breathing 101. 

“What about the others?” he asked, looking at the smoking remains of the building when Skinner and another agent (Agent Doggett, he assumed) made their way towards them and joined the conversation. 

“They’re okay,” Skinner said. “They were evacuated before the explosion. Taken to the hospital.” He studied the wounds on Mulder’s forehead, squinting. “You look like you need some medical attention, too.” 

“Scully’s a doctor. She can fix me up,” he said, looking at her for affirmation. His palm was bone dry in her hand and his words felt foolish in his mouth when he took in the worry on her face. 

“Mulder, one of these officers described the others as _catatonic_ before they left for the hospital. You need to go.” Her voice was shaking, but she phrased it as a statement, not an option. He knew he had lost this battle before it had begun, but he needed to assure her it wasn’t… like that.

“That’s how it was at first, Scully. They drug you and you can’t think for yourself. Then you snap back when it wears off. I’m okay.” 

“Mulder,” she said. She met his eyes. He just wanted to touch her everywhere, to convince himself _she_ was whole. “You don’t look okay.”

“We have a lot to discuss,” Skinner piped in, his voice quieter than usual. “We’ll talk while you’re getting fixed up. Two birds, one stone, the sooner you’ll be able to can get out of here.” 

“Please,” Scully said, and at that, he nodded. 

They were moving towards the car, his legs unsteadied by momentous impact, when he spotted another group of policemen. He felt Scully’s hand around his waist, balancing him. 

“Were all these cops around before you got here?” he asked Scully in a low voice, timing it all in his head. He must have arrived very shortly after her.

“Someone called in a tip about a bomb,” she said. “That wasn’t you?” 

“No,” he said, confused. Then, memories of his escape cascaded through him with a chilling rush, and it became clearer. The man who’d let him go. His dark hair and green eyes were the only features Mulder could remember behind the safety goggles and medical mask. He’d looked like all the others, and it’d reminded him of those brain teasers: one of these things is not like the rest.

_Now._

_Go._

Mulder glanced around, studying the sight of his imprisonment. The bleak deadness of it seemed appropriate. 

Firemen had moved in towards the building, likely when Scully was the only thing he could see. He watched them now, extinguishing the remaining fire before it spread through dry grass. 

In high school he’d read _Fahrenheit 451_. He thought of this, for whatever reason, passages flooding back to him in full form, reminding him of burnt reality and censored knowledge. The fear of truth. 

_A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon._

_Breach man’s mind._

Skinner’s voice rang through the cloud of his thoughts; he coughed on smoke. “When they put out the fire, we’ll have a team search inside for evidence.”

Mulder swallowed, only to find his mouth dry and aching.

“They won’t find anything,” he whispered, closing his eyes to the gentle squeeze of Scully’s hand in his.


	10. Worth every mile

[ ](http://s1179.photobucket.com/albums/x396/adrenalin211/?action=view&current=_thb_Screenshot127-tile2.jpg)

**Chapter 10: Worth every mile**

The hotel room in the city was nice on the inside, fluffy pillows and comfortable, clean bedding. It wasn’t what she was used to on their allotted budget, but Skinner dove into his own pockets so they could all stay in a nice place. Mulder’s room conjoined with hers, as though Skinner absolutely knew they wouldn’t be staying apart tonight, and _absolutely_ didn’t want to know more than that. 

Once they were alone, Mulder excused himself to wash up, asking her to _please_ not go anywhere, kissing her forehead before he disappeared into the bathroom, muttering a joke about being offended by his own body odor.

(Of course she wasn’t going to go anywhere.)

She hadn’t had much time to process things in the last few hours, but having Mulder back felt both natural and foreign, an illogicality that was not lost on her. She was aware, quite acutely, that she no longer felt swallowed by uncontrollable forces; his presence was comfort, relief, swelling care. His persona remained intact – witty repartee as a means to make light of serious situations still a vital component of his repertoire – only today they seemed quiet and forced, a guise that hid a broken spirit. 

( _Remind me to tell you about the memories_ , he’d whispered to her in the hospital when Skinner had disappeared to get coffee. 

_I have to tell you something, too,_ was all she’d managed to say before a nurse interrupted them. )

There was a lot to talk about. 

She was curious, of course, about his memories. He’d revealed what they’d done to him in an informal statement he’d made to Skinner, only the three of them present in the sterile hospital room. He’d told of his escape, and the mysterious man who’d helped. Of his phone call that, from all angels, seemed to have worked to end this project, save the other abductees, and stop whoever it was who was following her. He’d said that would have to be enough.

(“We still have the computer chip you left,” she’d said, trying to give him hope.

“Most that will get us is a warrant to search the Pentagon, which I’m sure is already…” he’d trailed off, never finishing the thought.) 

Their stories matched up like sequential pieces to a fragment of a puzzle. There was a lot that still confused her, loose ends around every corner of conversation. Much of what was said had made Mulder wince, his suspicions about his beliefs more or less confirmed by her investigation. 

(She’d scooted her chair closer to him when that happened. He’d clutched the material of her jacket under the hospital blankets, his heartbreak written in the strength of his grasp.)

After a few minutes in the bathroom he called her name (urgent desperation in his voice) and, though panic stretched through her, she controlled her breathing and opened the door calmly. He was sitting in the Jacuzzi tub, soaking in really hot water (if the room’s oppressive humidity were any indication), and smiling up at her. 

Only then did she exhale.

“What’s wrong?” Her eyes circled around the room, making sure.

“Nothing,” he whispered. She saw the rise and fall of his chest. “You were quiet out there.” 

She understood all too well, because she’d been silent for the sole purpose of listening to him. To the sound of the water swooshing around in the tub, shampoo bottles, squeaky faucets, telltale signs that he still in there. 

She took in the sight of him in the tub. At the hospital he’d ingested a lot of fluids in an attempt to balance his electrolytes, which were finally working to restore the color in his face. 

They’d eaten in the cafeteria, hashing out details with Doggett and Skinner, her legs stretched out to touch Mulder’s under the table.

“You don’t usually take baths, do you?” she said after a moment.

“I don’t like them. Bathing in your own grime?” he said with inflection. She gave him a questioning eyebrow. “It hurts to stand up,” he added, his voice quiet. 

“What hurts?” she asked too quickly. 

She hated this. The way she took forever to reclaim an appropriate level of concern following situations like this. Rationally, she should wait and see if there was something to be worried about before she generated a list of ten possible diagnoses. 

His face turned inward, looking ashamed. “I ran about ten miles with no shoes on when I escaped.” 

Scully blew out a sigh, closing her eyes and hoping to convey sympathy. “This is why you didn’t take off those shoes at the hospital?”

“I just wanted to go home,” he admitted. 

He lifted one of his feet onto the ledge of the tub so she could see. There were tiny lacerations all over the bottom of his foot. She came closer and sat on the floor. When she touched an uncut area of flesh he winced; she pulled back immediately. The entire underside of his foot looked tender and she bit her lip at the way he held his breath until her hands were a safe distance away from the sensitive zone. 

“I’m sorry this hotel isn’t home,” she whispered, moving her hand to his ankle and resting it there instead, needing to touch him somewhere.

“You’re home, Scully.” 

She gave a slight smile, pressing her lips together and absorbing his words, her eyes welling up before they traveled back down to his feet. She ran her thumb up the smooth bony flesh of his Achilles tendon. 

“When you’re done in here, I’ll clean these cuts up for you.” Her voice cracked. “It looks like there’s still some dirt inside. I have some Bacitracin in my bag.”

“Thanks.” 

She took a breath, the steam of the bathroom entering her lungs, the heat making her a little dizzy. 

“Agent Doggett picked you up a sweatshirt and some sweatpants at the hospital’s gift shop. He said that underwear would be a little too personal to buy for another man.” Mulder smiled at that, nodded his understanding. “The sweats are on the bed for when you get out.” 

“I’ve been known to go commando on occasion,” he stated, catching her attention before she turned to walk out and give him some privacy.

“Really?” Her voice held an air of skepticism.

“You don’t believe me, Scully? Why not? You’re scared of what it might make you think about in the middle of work?” Mulder smirked, a glimmer of mischief back in his eyes. 

She cracked a smile, but didn’t honor his comment with a response, instead rolling her eyes and turning around. She was idling in the doorway when he stopped her. “Hey, Scully?”

“Yes?”

“Can you stay here?” His expression was vulnerable, like he was depending on her answering in the affirmative. 

“You’re taking a bath!”

“But I can’t see you,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “When you’re out there and I’m in here…” he paused, looking up at her. 

“I’ll stay,” she said nodding. She took off her jacket and draped it over the sink, allowing herself to adjust to the warmth of the room. Nearly choking on the steamy mugginess, she left the door open and turned on the bathroom fan, taking a seat on the edge of the tub when she was satisfied with the temperature. 

After a moment Mulder broke the silence. 

“You know. Here I am _completely_ naked and there you are. Fully clothed. This strikes me as unfair, but I’m looking around and I don’t see a place where I can register my objection.” 

She laughed. Just a little bit, if only to stop herself from crying. There was so much that needed to be said, so much that bubbled up on the surface of her tongue, ready to be blurted, but she didn’t know how or when. He looked so…broken, despite all of his light-hearted attempts at convincing her otherwise. 

_God, what had they done to him?_

“Mulder, you’ve been—”

“—I’m joking, Scully. I just wanted to see that face you make. I’ve missed it.” After a moment his eyes met hers and he said, “That’s the face!” 

He was grinning at her, and when he held out his hand to get out of the tub, she took it and assisted, reaching for a dry towel to wrap around him.

++++++++++++++++++++

Exhaustion.

He’d spent most of his time unconscious lately, so the feeling was unfamiliar when it’d arrived full-force. The adrenaline of the day had worn off. His body suddenly registered the miles he’d covered, the hours he’d driven, and the fear that ran through his veins that had once served as energy.

He heard the faucet turn off a little while ago and was listening to Scully’s movements in the other room. The sounds of her rustling around and messing with the blow-dryer danced between the layers of asleep and awake. His eyelids drifted, only to startle open a second later. 

When she came out of the bathroom, wearing dark green pajamas that contrasted with the paleness of her face, he realized she looked even more exhausted than he, her eyes weighted down and her hair still a little bit damp. 

She crawled into bed with him, lifting up the heavy comforter and scooting under, placing her back flush against his chest. When she got closer he could see her eyes squinting and her mouth stretching open into a yawn. He settled in, dragging her body further into the coil of his, his chest warm and content.

“How long has it been since you’ve slept, Scully?” he whispered. She found his hand amidst the blankets and placed her fingers over his. Her feet were ice cold where they touched his, but that was always the case.

“I think I drifted off in the plane, but other than that it’s been a couple of days.” He felt her breath hit his hand, a rush of concern stampeding through.

“You should sleep, Scully. I’m not going anywhere.” 

She turned around in his arms until their faces were inches apart and he could smell the mint of her toothpaste. When she closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against his she sniffled a little. Scully pulled back to look at him, her eyes shiny and unreadable. He kissed her, soft and slow, unable to resist the supple pull of her lips, the way she let her breath escape into his mouth. She tasted like peppermint and smelled like the soap he liked, berries and oatmeal. Smooth and exfoliating. 

“I’ve been waiting to do that for so long,” he said when she pulled away. She smiled at him. He felt her hands rubbing the collar of his sweatshirt, her fingers cold on his neck. He touched his nose to hers, letting out an exhale. 

“There’s something I should tell you, Mulder. Before sleep. Before I put it off any longer. I’m excited, but not sure how to…” she trailed off. 

Her lip quivered when she met his gaze. He was trying, for the life of him, to see the excitement she was talking about. He ran a thumb across her damp cheek, then placed his hand on her shoulder. Tension was evident where he touched her and a light mist coated her eyes. “What is it, Scully?” 

“I’m pregnant,” she said. It came out as a whisper.

Her expression didn’t match up to his definition of the words she’d just spoken, making him rethink the accuracy of his internal dictionary. When he verified the meaning, he was sure, quite sure, that his eyes were beaming. He felt his lips turning up, his pupils processing. “You’re pregnant?” 

That couldn’t have been his voice that just came out, so high and airy. 

Then, a second after he’d processed the news (or started to, at least), her face transformed. Her fingers traced over the curve of his lips and a smile stretched all the way to her eyes, finally. _That smile._ That contagious glow that undid him and made him forget that the world didn’t start and end with her.

“Yes,” she said. 

_God,_ he couldn’t…Pregnant. 

_Pregnant_

He failed to find words for all the emotions enveloping him; he just knew that disbelief and awe were somewhere on the surface. He couldn’t stop smiling at the look on her face. That pure kind of happy. “But—” 

“—I know,” she said, reading his thoughts. “It doesn’t make sense. There’s only one way…”

“We…?” 

He looked at her, hopeful.

She was watching the expression he wore, clearly amused as he let this sink in, her grin so wide she was almost _laughing_ , relieved tears in her eyes when she confirmed it for him. “We did.” 

He kissed her. Again and again, sensing in her a need for reassurance. She barely caught up to his lips. 

“You’re happy?” she asked when he broke away to let her breathe. His heart was swelling, pounding steady. She pressed her hands against his chest. 

“Of course I’m happy.” He wound a piece of shower-clean hair behind her ear. His fingers were shaking. 

“I was worried to tell you,” she said, her eyes shy. She felt so _little_ next to the frame of his body, her knees folding between his legs. 

“Worried?” He kept his voice soft. “Why?”

“After all that’s happened since we’ve talked about this. I just didn’t know if you’d still… I didn’t know how you’d react.” 

“I’m _happy_ , Scully. I just want you to be happy, too.” Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “I’m surprised. And a little scared,” he admitted, though the smile on his face overpowered all else. He couldn’t quite reach beyond the wonder. “I think the parenthood thing will come a little more naturally to you than to me,” he clarified, laughing. “But we’ll figure it out.” 

She wove her legs further between his, pressing her lips against his mouth and nodding. “I am happy, Mulder.” 

“A _baby_?” Why the hell was this taking so long to grasp? 

“Yes.” 

“Is it okay? Should we get it checked out?” he asked, worried and rushed, suddenly thinking of a million things at once. (Baby strollers and cribs and the fact that they didn’t own a car with a good safety rating. He was way ahead of himself.) “You haven’t slept in two days,” he noted, bringing it back to the present.

“It’s fine, Mulder. Everything is normal.”

“Did you get enough to eat at the hospital?” Mulder reached under the covers and touched her stomach through the silky material of her pajamas. She closed her eyes. 

“Yes. I got more than enough,” she said, her words cut off by a yawn. She pressed her stomach against his hands, warm and smooth; her eyes glistened sleepiness. 

“You need sleep, Scully.” He felt her fatigue in the way she curled into him, her muscles finally relaxed. He wanted to keep talking, get more specifics, but she looked even more tired now that she’d told him this.

She hummed against his skin, her face in the curve of his neck. “I’m not supposed to sleep like this,” she whispered. “But I don’t want to move.” 

“How are you supposed to sleep?” He encouraged her to show him by making it less comfortable for her. He watched her rotate, spinning around in his arms until she was on her left side. She pressed her back against his chest. He felt warmth everywhere. 

“Can I stay like this?” he asked, settling behind her and running his hand down her arm.

“I won’t fall asleep otherwise,” she mumbled. “Not tonight.” She adjusted her head on the pillow they were sharing. He kissed her hair. 

A _baby_. 

“Hey, Scully?” he said a minute later. He knew it wouldn’t be long until she was asleep, but he needed to say this. 

“Yes?” 

“The only thing that kept me going at the place was memories of you.” 

She pulled their intertwined hands up to her chin, kissing him there. Soft. He felt a tear fall onto his knuckles. “I missed you so much.” 

He squeezed her against him. When the room fell quiet he listened to her breathing over the hum of the soda machine outside, his forearm lifting with the rise and fall of her chest. 

As she drifted to sleep he let the emotions come. Holding her here felt right, a perfect collision of luck and relief. While the thought of being a _dad_ to someone sent a wave of panic up his spine, this was quickly eradicated by the incredible thought of having a little Scully running around. 

When he was sure she was asleep he unclasped their hands and reached over to the nightstand to turn off the lamp. In the dark of the room he pulled another pillow next to hers and reclaimed his position, wrapping his body around her, placing his hand flat against her stomach, and resting his chin by her shoulder. 

Before he shut his eyes, he observed the layout of the room, noting the luminous glow of the hotel lights through the curtains. His body rested like a shield between hers and the door. As it should be.

++++++++++++++++++++

The afternoon sun shone through the thin openings of her blinds, causing flecks of swaying light to stripe his skin. He sat in the oversized corner chair, the Sports section she’d abandoned in his hands. He was reading baseball scores aloud to her, filling the silence with the sound of his voice.

He hadn’t left her since Nevada. They’d spent these last two days in her apartment, ordering food and watching movies, enjoying the immediate reassurance that came with waking up beside each other. She was confident it would continue. At one point in the distant past, she’d assumed she’d tire of this kind of constancy, of spending day after uninterrupted day listening to him rattling off statistics and paranormal theories and putting too much butter on her toast. 

It wasn’t tiresome. She was still overwhelmed by the awe of having him back, still readjusting to the luxury of looking at him and finding her balance. 

(Today, whenever she closed her eyes, she saw his hands on her, everywhere, smoothing up her thigh and landing on her ribs, a tickle forming in her throat.) 

She walked towards the chair he was occupying, gently extracting the newspaper from his hands. He looked up, about to utter some smart-ass protest, she was sure, but he froze when he met her gaze. 

She used the opportunity to sit on his lap, feeling his eyes on her as she did so. 

He helped her to position herself there, wrapping his arm around her. She draped her legs across his thighs, one hand on his chest and the other running through his hair. A smile formed on her face when she saw his surprised expression; she leaned forward to touch her lips to his.

He opened his mouth right away, tasting like coffee and the get-well-soon chocolate her mother had sent him. 

When his tongue massaged the inside of her mouth she broke the connection to let out a hot breath, already overcome by her need to have more of him. _All_ of him. 

She moved her lips to his neck, kissing a path across the line of his jaw and feeling the vibration of his hum as he sounded out his approval.

“Do you feel up to this?” she whispered, pulling away for a second to look at him. His head was tilted back against the chair, the wounds on his skin looking harsh but healing in the midday light. He opened his eyes and grinned.

“Literally or figuratively?” he asked, raising his eyebrow.

She moved in again, laughing against his mouth. “Both,” she clarified.

“Both,” he responded with ease, the meaning rippling through her body with its promise. 

As they kissed, a collection of past moments began to layer upon the present, his final letter storming her mind, the words traveling like clouds through the air. She pressed her lips harder against him, responding to the eagerness in his breathing.

_My unyielding love for you._

When she managed to extract herself from his lips, they walked to her bedroom. She felt his arms winding around her waist as he followed.

A rush of inner heat encircled her when she lowered his boxers and watched his face respond to her teasing touch.

_I’ll demonstrate, in no uncertain terms._

Their clothes fell into a pile on the floor in a tangle of opposite and complimentary colors. He stood naked, looking at her for a moment before his hands found her stomach, his fingers brushing softly across her flesh. 

“The baby, Scully,” he said moments later when he was hovering over her, about to enter. Scully arched her back, unfocused urge. She blinked, registering his concern. 

“It’s okay. I promise.” Her fingers slid through the hair on the back of his neck.

His head hung above her, his expression tentative. He was so close to being where she wanted him it _hurt_ , her body throbbing out its protest. 

“Are you sure?” he whispered. She noticed the way he held his whole body at a cautious, tense distance, his biceps locked with a safe space between them

Scully nodded, biting her lip and locking eyes with him. She skimmed her hand up the length of his arm, feeling the apprehension drain as he absorbed the reassurance of her expression. 

“Don’t worry, Scully,” he whispered after a moment. “I’ll go slow.” 

When he was finally inside she had to shut her eyes to the sensation, just for a moment. She listened to the coarse sounds escaping him, then watched the way he kept his eyes planted on her, studying her face with every forward glide.

“I’m not worried, Mulder,” she whispered when she remembered to speak.

“Just tell me if I hurt you, okay?” his voice was heavy now, coated by the effects of their movements. 

She swallowed the emotion that rose when she saw his face, scarred and scared, love overriding. The circuitous path of these last few months spread through her conscience, a realization that filled the sullen hole dug during the days they’d spent apart. 

“You won’t hurt me,” she said, believing it, in no uncertain terms.

* * *


End file.
